Related papers: Ion Condensation onto Ribozyme is Site-Specific an…
Folding of ribozymes into well-defined tertiary structures usually requires divalent cations. How Mg$^{2+}$ ions direct the folding kinetics has been a long-standing unsolved problem because experiments cannot detect the positions and…
The increasing importance of RNA as a prime player in biology can hardly be overstated. Problems in RNA, such as folding and RNA-RNA interactions that drive phase separation, require cations. Because experiments alone cannot reveal the…
RNAs are negatively charged molecules residing in macromolecular crowding cellular environments. Macromolecular confinement can influence the ion effects in RNA folding. In this work, using the recently developed tightly bound ion model for…
RNA duplex stability depends strongly on ionic conditions, and inside cells RNAs are exposed to both monovalent and multivalent ions. Despite recent advances, we do not have general methods to quantitatively account for the effects of…
Ions interacting with hydrated RNA play a central role in defining its secondary and tertiary structure. While spatial arrangements of ions, water molecules, and phosphate groups have been inferred from X-ray studies, the role of…
The structure of the self-cleaving hairpin ribozyme is well characterized, and its folding has been examined in bulk and by single-molecule fluorescence, establishing the importance of cations, especially magnesium in the stability of the…
Interaction with divalent cations is of paramount importance for RNA structural stability and function. We here report a detailed molecular dynamics study of all the possible binding sites for Mg$^{2+}$ on a RNA duplex, including both…
Electrostatic interactions involving proteins depend not just on the ionic charges involved but also on their chemical identities. Here we examine the origins of incompletely understood differences in the strength of association of…
We present a thermodynamically robust coarse-grained model to simulate folding of RNA in monovalent salt solutions. The model includes stacking, hydrogen bond and electrostatic interactions as fundamental components in describing the…
Ionic behaviors, including ion distributions and hydration characteristics at solid-liquid interfaces, are important research interests in many important applications, such as electric double-layer capacitors and water lubrication. Here, we…
The computer-aided folding of biomolecules, particularly RNAs, is one of the most difficult challenges in computational structural biology. RNA tetraloops are fundamental RNA motifs playing key roles in RNA folding and RNA-RNA and…
RNA pseudoknots are a kind of minimal RNA tertiary structural motifs, and their three-dimensional (3D) structures and stability play essential roles in a variety of biological functions. Therefore, to predict 3D structures and stability of…
RNAs self-interact through hydrogen-bond base-pairing between nucleotides and fold into specific, stable structures that substantially govern their biochemical behaviour. Experimental characterization of these structures remains difficult,…
We use X-ray scattering and molecular simulations to investigate the structural properties of complexes of multivalent cationic lipids and DNA molecules. At low mole fraction of neutral lipids (NLs), $\Phi_{\rm NL}$, the complexes show…
RNA molecules are essential cellular machines performing a wide variety of functions for which a specific three-dimensional structure is required. Over the last several years, experimental determination of RNA structures through X-ray…
Potassium and sodium ions are crucial for many physiological processes in living systems and play different roles when interacting with proteins and enzymes. Intracellular concentration of potassium is always maintained higher than that of…
Availability of high-resolution crystal structures of ribosomal subunits of different species opens a route to investigate about molecular interactions between its constituents and stabilization strategy. Structural analysis of the small…
Biological water is an ionic solution containing both monovalent and divalent ions. However, the effects of divalent ions on the dynamics of biological water remain largely unknown. Here, we investigate how the transport dynamics of water…
Interfacial hydration structures are crucial in wide-ranging applications, including battery, colloid, lubrication etc. Multivalent ions like Mg2+ and La3+ show irreplaceable roles in these applications, which are hypothesized due to their…
Surface sensitive synchrotron x-ray scattering studies were performed to obtain the distribution of monovalent ions next to a highly charged interface. A lipid phosphate (dihexadecyl hydrogen-phosphate) was spread as a monolayer at the…