title: Estimating the contributions of selection and self-organization in RNA secondary structure.
abstract: In addition to characteristic structural properties imposed by evolutionary modification, evolved, single-stranded RNAs also display characteristic structural properties imposed by intrinsic physical constraints on RNA polymer folding. The balance of intrinsic and functionally selected characters in the folded conformation of evolved secondary structures was determined by comparing the predicted secondary structures of evolved and unevolved (random) RNA sequences. Though evolved conformations are significantly more ordered than conformations of random-sequence RNA, this analysis demonstrates that the majority of conformational order within evolved structures results not from evolutionary optimization but from constraints imposed by rules intrinsic to RNA polymer folding.
authors.affiliation: Department of Earth and Space Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90024, USA. schultes@wi.mit.edu
authors.forename: E A
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Schultes
authors.forename: P T
authors.initials: PT
authors.lastname: Hraber
authors.forename: T H
authors.initials: TH
authors.lastname: LaBean
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D011897:Random Allocation; D012641:Selection, Genetic
chemical_list: D012313:RNA