Related papers: Statistical mechanics of RNA folding: a lattice ap…
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…
A lattice model of RNA denaturation which fully accounts for the excluded volume effects among nucleotides is proposed. A numerical study shows that interactions forming pseudoknots must be included in order to get a sharp continuous…
We study theoretically the denaturation of single RNA molecules by mechanical stretching, focusing on signatures of the (un)folding pathway in molecular fluctuations. Our model describes the interactions between nucleotides by incorporating…
We study pairs of interacting self-avoiding walks on the 3d simple cubic lattice. They have a common origin and are allowed to overlap only at the same monomer position along the chain. The latter overlaps are indeed favored by an energetic…
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…
We develope a theoretical framework, based on exclusion process, that is motivated by a biological phenomenon called transcript slippage (TS). In this model a discrete lattice represents a DNA strand while each of the particles that hop on…
As a consequence of the rugged landscape of RNA molecules their folding is described by the kinetic partitioning mechanism according to which only a small fraction ($\phi_F$) reaches the folded state while the remaining fraction 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…
We formulate the RNA folding problem as an $N\times N$ matrix field theory. This matrix formalism allows us to give a systematic classification of the terms in the partition function according to their topological character. The theory is…
We present a panoramic view of the utility of coarse-grained (CG) models to study folding and functions of proteins and RNA. Drawing largely on the methods developed in our group over the last twenty years, we describe a number of key…
We introduce a method for predicting RNA folding pathways, with an application to the most important RNA tetraloops. The method is based on the idea that ensembles of three-dimensional fragments extracted from high-resolution crystal…
The kinetic folding of RNA sequences into secondary structures is modeled as a complex adaptive system, the components of which are possible RNA structural rearrangements (SRs) and their associated bases and base pairs. RNA bases and base…
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…
We consider a simple model for the unfolding of RNA tertiary structure under dynamic loading. The opening of such a structure is regarded as a two step process, each corresponding to the overcoming of a single energy barrier. The resulting…
We introduce a two-species exclusion model to describe the key features of the conflict between the RNA polymerase (RNAP) motor traffic, engaged in the transcription of a segment of DNA, concomitant with the progress of two DNA replication…
By exerting mechanical force it is possible to unfold/refold RNA molecules one at a time. In a small range of forces, an RNA molecule can hop between the folded and the unfolded state with force-dependent kinetic rates. Here, we introduce a…
Computational prediction of RNA structures is an important problem in computational structural biology. Studies of RNA structure formation often assume that the process starts from a fully synthesized sequence. Experimental evidence,…
DNA adsorption and naturation is modeled via two interacting flexible homopolymers coupled to a solid surface. DNA denatures if the entropy gain for unbinding the two strands overcomes the loss of binding energy. When adsorbed to a surface,…
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 consider a lattice polymer model (random walk), in which the walk is allowed to visit lattice bonds at most twice. Such a model might have some relevance to describe statistical properties of RNA molecules. In order to mimic base…