Related papers: Size, shape, and flexibility of RNA structures
The ongoing effort to detect and characterize physical entanglement in biopolymers has so far established that knots are present in many globular proteins and also abound in viral DNA packaged inside bacteriophages. RNA molecules, on the…
Recently several minimum free energy (MFE) folding algorithms for predicting the joint structure of two interacting RNA molecules have been proposed. Their folding targets are interaction structures, that can be represented as diagrams with…
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…
Ab initio RNA secondary structure predictions have long dismissed helices interior to loops, so-called pseudoknots, despite their structural importance. Here, we report that many pseudoknots can be predicted through long time scales RNA…
Self-similar properties of the ribosome in terms of the mass fractal dimension are investigated. We find that both the 30S subunit and the 16S rRNA have fractal dimensions of 2.58 and 2.82, respectively; while the 50S subunit as well as the…
We describe quantitatively a RNA molecule under the influence of an external force exerted at its two ends as in a typical single-molecule experiment. Our calculation incorporates the interactions between nucleotides by using the…
In this paper we analyze the length-spectrum of blocks in $\gamma$-structures. $\gamma$-structures are a class of RNA pseudoknot structures that plays a key role in the context of polynomial time RNA folding. A $\gamma$-structure is…
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…
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…
The formation of a viral capsid -- the highly-ordered protein shell that surrounds the genome of a virus -- is the canonical example of self-assembly. The capsids of many positive-sense RNA viruses spontaneously assemble from in vitro…
Atomically detailed simulations of RNA folding have proven very challenging in view of the difficulties of developing realistic force fields and the intrinsic computational complexity of sampling rare conformational transitions. To tackle…
Confined thin structures are ubiquitous in nature. Spatial and length constraints have led to a number of novel packing strategies at both the micro-scale, as when DNA packages inside a capsid, and the macro-scale, seen in plant root…
Stability of the branching structure of an RNA molecule is an important condition for its function. In this letter we show that the melting thermodynamics of RNA molecules is very sensitive to their branching geometry for the case of a…
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…
Researchers have repeatedly found that the ends of an RNA sequence are significantly closer than expected for a random linear chain. However, we prove that the ends of a branched structure are almost certainly close. Our results are…
In this paper we study irreducibility in RNA structures. By RNA structure we mean RNA secondary as well as RNA pseudoknot structures. In our analysis we shall contrast random and minimum free energy (mfe) configurations. We compute various…
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…
The distances over which biological molecules and their complexes can function range from a few nanometres, in the case of folded structures, to millimetres, for example during chromosome organization. Describing phenomena that cover such…
The scaling properties of DNA knots of different complexities were studied by atomic force microscope. Following two different protocols DNA knots are adsorbed onto a mica surface in regimes of (i) strong binding, that induces a kinetic…
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…