title: Direct measurement of tertiary contact cooperativity in RNA folding.
abstract: All structured biological macromolecules must overcome the thermodynamic folding problem to populate a unique functional state among a vast ensemble of unfolded and alternate conformations. The exploration of cooperativity in protein folding has helped reveal and distinguish the underlying mechanistic solutions to this folding problem. Analogous dissections of RNA tertiary stability remain elusive, however, despite the central biological importance of folded RNA molecules and the potential to reveal fundamental properties of structured macromolecules via comparisons of protein and RNA folding. We report a direct quantitative measure of tertiary contact cooperativity in a folded RNA. We precisely measured the stability of an independently folding P4-P6 domain from the Tetrahymena thermophila group I intron by single molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (smFRET). Using wild-type and mutant RNAs, we found that cooperativity between the two tertiary contacts enhances P4-P6 stability by 3.2 +/- 0.2 kcal/mol.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biochemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Bernie D
authors.initials: BD
authors.lastname: Sattin
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.forename: Kevin
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Travers
authors.forename: Steven
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Chu
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Herschlag
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D031541:Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer; D007700:Kinetics; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D016808:Tetrahymena thermophila / Q000235:genetics; D013816:Thermodynamics
chemical_list: D012313:RNA