Modeling the structure of RNA molecules with small-angle X-ray scattering data.
We propose a novel fragment assembly method for low-resolution modeling of RNA and show how it may be used along with small-angle X-ray solution scattering (SAXS) data to model low-resolution structures of particles having as many as 12 independent secondary structure elements. We assessed this model-building procedure by using both artificial data on a previously proposed benchmark and publicly available data. With the artificial data, SAXS-guided models show better similarity to native structures than ROSETTA decoys. The publicly available data showed that SAXS-guided models can be used to reinterpret RNA structures previously deposited in the Protein Data Bank. Our approach allows for fast and efficient building of de novo models of RNA using approximate secondary structures that can be readily obtained from existing bioinformatic approaches. We also offer a rigorous assessment of the resolving power of SAXS in the case of small RNA structures, along with a small multimetric benchmark of the proposed method.
NMR-based Structural Biology, Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Niedersachsen, Germany ; Hamburg Outstation, European Molecular Biology Laboratories, Hamburg, Germany.
Michal Jan
MJ
Gajda
Denise
D
Martinez Zapien
Emiko
E
Uchikawa
Anne-Catherine
AC
Dock-Bregeon
D000465:Algorithms; D001483:Base Sequence; D003198:Computer Simulation; D006801:Humans; D055029:Inverted Repeat Sequences; D008958:Models, Molecular; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D012313:RNA / Q000737:chemistry*; D053838:Scattering, Small Angle; D012984:Software; D014961:X-Ray Diffraction
D012313:RNA