Related papers: On a barrier height problem for RNA branching
In recent years single molecule force spectroscopy has opened a new avenue to provide profiles of the complex energy landscape of biomolecules. In this field, quantitative analyses of the data employing sound theoretical models, have played…
We determine both barrier heights and prefactors for protein folding by applying constraints determined from experimental rate measurements to a Kramers theory for folding rate. The theoretical values are required to match the experimental…
The translocation of structured RNA or DNA molecules through narrow pores necessitates the opening of all base pairs. Here, we study the interplay between the dynamics of translocation and base-pairing theoretically, using kinetic Monte…
This contribution focuses on the fascinating RNA molecule, its sequence-dependent folding driven by base-pairing interactions, the interplay between these interactions and natural evolution, and its multiple regulatory roles. The four of us…
The Nearest Neighbor model is the $\textit{de facto}$ thermodynamic model of RNA secondary structure formation and is a cornerstone of RNA structure prediction and sequence design. The current functional form (Turner 2004) contains…
RNA co-transcriptional folding has long been suspected to play an active role in helping proper native folding of ribozymes and structured regulatory motifs in mRNA untranslated regions. Yet, the underlying mechanisms and coding…
We introduce a biologically natural, mathematically tractable model of random phylogenetic network to describe evolution in the presence of hybridization. One of the features of this model is that the hybridization rate of the lineages…
Consider $N$ particles performing random walks on the $\epsilon$-grid $(\epsilon Z)^d$, $\epsilon>0$ with branching and density-dependent selection: When one of the particles branches, a particle is removed from the most populated site. The…
Translation is a crucial step in gene expression. During translation, macromolecules called ribosomes "read" the mRNA strand in a sequential manner and produce a corresponding protein. Translation is known to consume most of the cell's…
We construct a minimalist model of RNA secondary-structure formation and use it to study the mapping from sequence to structure. There are strong, qualitative differences between two-letter and four or six-letter alphabets. With only two…
It has been shown that minimum free energy structure for RNAs and RNA-RNA interaction is often incorrect due to inaccuracies in the energy parameters and inherent limitations of the energy model. In contrast, ensemble based quantities such…
We propose a general theory to describe the distribution of protein-folding transition paths. We show that transition paths follow a predictable sequence of high-free-energy transient states that are separated by free-energy barriers. Each…
DNA hairpin molecules with periodic base sequences can be expected to exhibit a regular coarse-grained free energy landscape (FEL) as function of the number of open base pairs and applied mechanical force. Using a commonly employed model,…
Energy landscape theory describes how a full-length protein can attain its native fold by sampling only a tiny fraction of all possible structures. Although protein folding is now understood to be concomitant with synthesis on the ribosome,…
The mechanical unfolding of a simple RNA hairpin and of a 236--bases portion of the Tetrahymena thermophila ribozyme is studied by means of an Ising--like model. Phase diagrams and free energy landscapes are computed exactly and suggest a…
We propose a new deterministic methodology to predict RNA sequence and protein folding. Is stem enough for structure prediction? The main idea is to consider all possible stem formation in the given sequence. With the stem loop energy and…
We present a unified framework for folding kinetics of proteins and RNA. The basis for this framework relies on the notion of topological frustration, which gives rise to several competing basins of attraction (CBA) in addition to the…
A general theoretical framework is developed using free energy functional methods to understand the effects of heterogeneity in the folding of a well-designed protein. Native energetic heterogeneity arising from non-uniformity in native…
Recent experiments on unzipping of RNA helix-loop structures by force have shown that about 40-base molecules can undergo kinetic transitions between two well-defined `open' and `closed' states, on a timescale = 1 sec [Liphardt et al.,…
The Minimum Branch Vertices Spanning Tree problem aims to find a spanning tree $T$ in a given graph $G$ with the fewest branch vertices, defined as vertices with a degree three or more in $T$. This problem, known to be NP-hard, has…