Related papers: Minimal Models for RNA Simulations
Protein-DNA interactions are vital for many processes in living cells, especially transcriptional regulation and DNA modification. To further our understanding of these important processes on the microscopic level, it is necessary that…
The biomolecules in and around a living cell -- proteins, nucleic acids, lipids, carbohydrates -- continuously sample myriad conformational states that are thermally accessible at physiological temperatures. Simultaneously, a given…
Ribonucleic acids (RNA) are unique in that they can store genetic information, replicate and perform catalysis. Importantly, RNA molecules are highly dynamic, and thus determining the ensemble of conformations that they populate is crucial…
Random graph models have been instrumental in characterizing complex networks, but chemical reaction networks (CRNs) are better represented as hypergraphs. Traditional models of random CRNs often reduce CRNs to bipartite graphs,…
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…
Integrative biomolecular modeling of RNA relies on structural refined collections and accurate experimental data that reflect binding and folding behavior. However, the prediction of such collections remains challenging due to the rugged…
MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules, about 22 nucleotide long, which post-transcriptionally regulate their target messenger RNAs (mRNAs). They accomplish key roles in gene regulatory networks, ranging from signaling pathways to…
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…
Biological phenomena differ significantly from physical phenomena. At the heart of this distinction is the fact that biological entities have computational abilities and thus they are inherently difficult to predict. This is the reason why…
The observation that, through a titration mechanism, microRNAs (miRNAs) can act as mediators of effective interactions among their common targets (competing endogenous RNAs or ceRNAs) has brought forward the idea ('ceRNA hypothesis') that…
Microphase separation is common in active biological systems as exemplified by the separation of RNA and DNA-rich phases in the cell nucleus driven by the transcriptional activity of polymerase enzymes acting similarly to amphiphiles in a…
RNA function crucially depends on its structure. Thermodynamic models currently used for secondary structure prediction rely on computing the partition function of folding ensembles, and can thus estimate minimum free-energy structures and…
The encapsulation of polyanions, whether single-stranded RNAs or synthetic polymers, is primarily driven by attractive electrostatic interactions between the positively charged, structurally disordered RNA-binding domains of virus coat…
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…
We present a tutorial on setting-up the oxDNA coarse-grained model for simulations of DNA and RNA nanotechnology. The model is a popular tool used both by theorists and experimentalists to simulate nucleic acid systems both in biology and…
The last decade has witnessed great experimental progress that has led to measurements of cross sections--polarized as well as unpolarized--of of high accuracy in several $NN \to NNx$ reaction channels. These data, naturally, pose…
Nucleation, commonly associated with discontinuous transformations between metastable and stable phases, is crucial in fields as diverse as atmospheric science and nanoscale electronics. Traditionally, it is considered a microscopic process…
We analyze the thermodynamic properties of a simplified model for folded RNA molecules recently studied by G. Vernizzi, H. Orland, A. Zee (in {\it Phys. Rev. Lett.} {\bf 94} (2005) 168103). The model consists of a chain of one-flavor base…
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…
microRNAs (miRNAs) regulate gene expression at post-transcriptional level by repressing target RNA molecules. Competition to bind miRNAs tends in turn to correlate their targets, establishing effective RNA-RNA interactions that can…