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Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America logoLink to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
. 1975 Jun;72(6):2017–2021. doi: 10.1073/pnas.72.6.2017

Method for predicting RNA secondary structure.

J M Pipas, J E McMahon
PMCID: PMC432683  PMID: 1056009

Abstract

We report a method for predicting the most stable secondary structure of RNA from its primary sequence of nucleotides. The technique consists of a series of three computer programs interfaced to take the nucleotide sequence of any RNA and (a) list all possible helical regions, using modified Watson-Crick base-pairing rules; (b) create all possible secondary structures by forming permutations of compatible helical regions; and (c)evaluate each structure for total free energy of formation from a completely extended chain. A free energy distribution and the base-by-base bonding interactions of each possible structure are catalogued by the system and are readily available for examination. The method has been applied to 62 tRNA sequences. The total free-energy of the predicted most stable structures ranged from -19 to -41 kcal/mole (-22 to -49 kJ/mole). The number of structures created was also highly sequence-dependent and ranged from 200 to 13,000. In nearly all cases the cloverleaf is predicted to be the structure with the lowest free energy of formation.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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