Year: 1999
Type: article
Abstract: The statistical mechanics of heteropolymer structure formation is studied in the context of RNA secondary structures. A designed RNA sequence biased energetically towards a particular native structure (a hairpin) is used to study the transition between the native and molten phase of the RNA as a function of temperature. The transition is driven by a competition between the energy gained from the polymer's overlap with the native structure and the entropic gain of forming random contacts. A simplified Go\ifmmode\bar\else\textasciimacron\fi{}-like model is proposed and solved exactly. The predicted critical behavior is verified via exact numerical enumeration of a large ensemble of similarly designed sequences.
Source: Physical Review Letters
Authors: R. Bundschuh, T. Hwa
Institution: University of California San Diego
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2146923742