Table 2.

Base pair distance between a minimum free energy structure and suboptimal structure. The average structure is composed of the most common structural elements at each position in the set of structures. The second structure requires unzipping of a short-helix (4 moves), followed by matching the distal 5′ and 3′ ends (5 moves) to reproduce the minimum free energy structure. In the last entry, at position 5, the average structure is marked with an underscore since no character is present in >50% of the set.

Structure Set	Base Pair Distance
(((((.....)))))	Minimum free energy structure
((((......)))).	9
((((.......))))	1
(((.(.......).)))	1
(.(((.....))).)	1
(((.........)))	2
((((_.....)))))	Average structure