title: Conformational flexibility of two RNA trimers explored by computational tools and database search.
abstract: Two RNA sequences, AAA and AUG, were studied by the conformational search program CICADA and by molecular dynamics (MD) in the framework of the AMBER force field, and also via thorough PDB database search. CICADA was used to provide detailed information about conformers and conformational interconversions on the energy surfaces of the above molecules. Several conformational families were found for both sequences. Analysis of the results shows differences, especially between the energy of the single families, and also in flexibility and concerted conformational movement. Therefore, several MD trajectories (altogether 16 ns) were run to obtain more details about both the stability of conformers belonging to different conformational families and about the dynamics of the two systems. Results show that the trajectories strongly depend on the starting structure. When the MD start from the global minimum found by CICADA, they provide a stable run, while MD starting from another conformational family generates a trajectory where several different conformational families are visited. The results obtained by theoretical methods are compared with the thorough database search data. It is concluded that all except for the highest energy conformational families found in theoretical result also appear in experimental data. Registry numbers: adenylyl-(3' --> 5')-adenylyl-(3' --> 5')-adenosine [917-44-2] adenylyl-(3' --> 5')-uridylyl-(3' --> 5')-guanosine [3494-35-7].
authors.affiliation: National Centre for Biomolecular Research, Department of Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Masaryk University, Kotlrsk 2, 611 37 Brno, Czech Republic. jkoca@chemi.muni.cz
authors.forename: Eva
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Fadrná
authors.forename: Jaroslav
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Koca
mesh_terms: D001483:Base Sequence; D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D030541:Databases, Genetic; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D015394:Molecular Structure; D009038:Motion; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D012313:RNA