Impact of loop statistics on the thermodynamics of RNA folding.
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.
Einert
Thomas R
TR
Physik Department, Technische Universität München, 85748 Garching, Germany.
Näger
Paul
P
Orland
Henri
H
Netz
Roland R
RR