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. 2009 May 20;96(10):4024–4034. doi: 10.1016/j.bpj.2009.02.044

Figure 5.

Figure 5

(a) The dominant folding pathway and the intercluster transition rates for the hairpin in Fig. 3a at f = 6 pN and T = 25°C. (b) The unfolding pathway at f = 14 pN and T = 25°C. We find the rate-limiting step for folding is the formation of the native base stack 9UA10-17UA18 (C1 → C2) due to the large entropic barrier, while the rate-limiting step for the unfolding is the disruption of the nonnative base stack 5GC6-21GC22 (C4 → C3) due to the large enthalpic cost for breaking the base stack. I(N, NN) denotes a conformation with N native basepairs and NN nonnative basepairs. The figure also shows the intercluster transition rates in s−1.