title: Transient RNA structure features are evolutionarily conserved and can be computationally predicted.
abstract: Functional RNA structures tend to be conserved during evolution. This finding is, for example, exploited by comparative methods for RNA secondary structure prediction that currently provide the state-of-art in terms of prediction accuracy. We here provide strong evidence that homologous RNA genes not only fold into similar final RNA structures, but that their folding pathways also share common transient structural features that have been evolutionarily conserved. For this, we compile and investigate a non-redundant data set of 32 sequences with known transient and final RNA secondary structures and devise a dedicated computational analysis pipeline.
authors.affiliation: Centre for High-Throughput Biology, University of British Columbia, 2125 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada.
authors.forename: Jing Yun A
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Zhu
authors.forename: Adi
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Steif
authors.forename: Jeff R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Proctor
authors.forename: Irmtraud M
authors.initials: IM
authors.lastname: Meyer
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D059370:RNA Folding; D012689:Sequence Homology, Nucleic Acid; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D012313:RNA