title: Impact of loop statistics on the thermodynamics of RNA folding.
abstract: Loops are abundant in native RNA structures and proliferate close to the unfolding transition. By including a statistical weight approximately l(-c) for loops of length l in the recursion relation for the partition function, we show that the heat capacity depends sensitively on the presence and value of the exponent c, even for a short explicit tRNA sequence. For long homo-RNA, we analytically calculate the critical temperature and critical exponents which exhibit a nonuniversal dependence on c.
authors.affiliation: Physik Department, Technische Universität München, 85748 Garching, Germany.
authors.forename: Thomas R
authors.initials: TR
authors.lastname: Einert
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Näger
authors.forename: Henri
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Orland
authors.forename: Roland R
authors.initials: RR
authors.lastname: Netz