Thermodynamic matchers: strengthening the significance of RNA folding energies

Comput Syst Bioinformatics Conf. 2006:111-21.

Abstract

Thermodynamic RNA secondary structure prediction is an important recipe for the latest generation of functional non-coding RNA finding tools. However, the predicted energy is not strong enough by itself to distinguish a single functional non-coding RNA from other RNA. Here, we analyze how well an RNA molecule folds into a particular structural class with a restricted folding algorithm called Thermodynamic Matcher (TDM). We compare this energy value to that of randomized sequences. We construct and apply TDMs for the non-coding RNA families RNA I and hammerhead ribozyme type III and our results show that using TDMs rather than universal minimum free energy folding allows for highly significant predictions.

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Base Sequence
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Nucleic Acid Conformation*
  • Nucleotides / chemistry
  • RNA / chemistry*
  • RNA, Catalytic / chemistry
  • Software
  • Thermodynamics

Substances

  • Nucleotides
  • RNA, Catalytic
  • hammerhead ribozyme
  • RNA