2009/08/14 by Asamoah Nkwanta, Nkwanta, Asamoah, Wilfred Ndifon +1
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Medicine · #Biomolecules (q-bio.BM) #FOS: Biological sciences #Genomics (q-bio.GN) #Quantitative Methods (q-bio.QM) #RNA Research and Splicing #RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms #Viral Infections and Immunology Research
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0908.2025
openalex publication_date 2009/08/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Metrics for indirectly predicting the folding rates of RNA sequences are of interest. In this letter, we introduce a simple metric of RNA structural complexity, which accounts for differences in the energetic contributions of RNA base contacts toward RNA structure formation. We apply the metric to RNA sequences whose folding rates were previously determined experimentally. We find that the metric has good correlation (correlation coefficient: -0.95, p << 0.01) with the logarithmically transformed folding rates of those RNA sequences. This suggests that the metric can be useful for predicting RNA folding rates. We use the metric to predict the folding rates of bacterial and eukaryotic group II introns. Future applications of the metric (e.g., to predict structural RNAs) could prove fruitful.