Related papers: Universal Cold RNA Phase Transitions
RNA forms elaborate secondary structures through intramolecular base pairing. These structures perform critical biological functions within each cell. Due to the availability of a polynomial algorithm to calculate the partition function…
Enhanced dynamical fluctuations of RNAs, facilitated by a network of water molecules with strong interactions with RNA, are suspected to be critical in their ability to respond to a variety of cellular signals. Using atomically detailed…
Formation of RNA secondary structures is an example of the sequence-structure problem omnipresent in biopolymers. A theoretical question of recent interest is whether a random RNA sequence undergoes a finite temperature glass transition. We…
We study secondary structures of random RNA molecules by means of a renormalized field theory based on an expansion in the sequence disorder. We show that there is a continuous phase transition from a molten phase at higher temperatures to…
We study the folding of RNA secondary structures with quenched sequence randomness by means of the constrained annealing method. A thermodynamic phase transition is induced by including the conformational weight of loop structures. In…
The statistical mechanics of heteropolymer structure formation is studied in the context of RNA secondary structures. A designed RNA sequence biased energetically towards a particular native structure (a hairpin) is used to study the…
We numerically study a disordered model for the RNA secondary structure and we find that it undergoes a phase transition, with a breaking of the replica symmetry in the low temperature region (like in spin glasses). Our results are based on…
Folding of RNA is subject to a competition between entropy, relevant at high temperatures, and the random, or random looking, sequence, determining the low- temperature phase. It is known from numerical simulations that for random as well…
High-resolution quasi-elastic neutron scattering spectroscopy was used to measure H2O and D2O hydrated RNA samples. The contribution of scattering from RNA was subtracted out by taking the difference of the signals between the two samples.…
We study the force-induced unfolding of random disordered RNA or single-stranded DNA polymers. The system undergoes a second order phase transition from a collapsed globular phase at low forces to an extensive necklace phase with a…
Mechanical unfolding trajectories, generated by applying constant force in optical tweezer experiments, show that RNA hairpins and the P5abc subdomain of the group I intron unfold reversibly. We use coarse-grained Go-like models for RNA…
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…
We discuss the physics of RNA as described by its secondary structure. We examine the static properties of a homogeneous RNA-model that includes pairing and base stacking energies as well as entropic costs for internal loops. For large…
Mechanical unfolding of RNA structures, ranging from hairpins to ribozymes, using laser optical tweezer (LOT) experiments have begun to reveal the features of the energy landscape that cannot be easily explored using conventional…
Due to the hierarchical organization of RNA structures and their pivotal roles in fulfilling RNA functions, the formation of RNA secondary structure critically influences many biological processes and has thus been a crucial research topic.…
We analyze different microscopic RNA models at zero temperature. We discuss both the most simple model, that suffers a large degeneracy of the ground state, and models in which the degeneracy has been remove, in a more or less severe…
Models for RNA secondary structures (the topology of folded RNA) without pseudo knots are disordered systems with a complex state-space below a critical temperature. Hence, a complex dynamical (glassy) behavior can be expected, when…
Secondary structure formation of nucleic acids strongly depends on salt concentration and temperature. We develop a theory for RNA folding that correctly accounts for sequence effects, the entropic contributions associated with loop…
We characterize the low temperature phase of a simple model for RNA secondary structures by determining the typical energy scale E(l) of excitations involving l bases. At zero temperature, we find a scaling law E(l) \sim l^\theta with…
RNA folding is a kinetic process governed by the competition of a large number of structures stabilized by the transient formation of base pairs that may induce complex folding pathways and the formation of misfolded structures. Despite of…