ABSTRACT
RNA molecules are known to perform a variety of different biological functions, including roles as messenger (mRNA), transfer (tRNA), and ribosomal (rRNA) molecules in protein synthesis.
Each of these different types of RNA pose a common challenge: to understand the folding of the RNA sequence into a structure that performs biochemical functions. Of particular interest is the structure and function of ribosomal RNA molecules, both because of the size and complexity of the structures as well as their essential functionality in protein biosynthesis. Ribosomes are a
T&F Cat # C6847 Chapter: 3 page: 49 date: August 5, 2009
T&F Cat # C6847 Chapter: 3 page: 50 date: August 5, 2009
complex of several RNA sequences, which comprise about 2/3 of the ribosome, and various small proteins. For instance, a bacterial (70S) ribosome consists of two subunits: a large (50S) and small (30S). These subunits in turn contain a 5S RNA and 23S RNA sequences in the large and a 16S RNA sequence in the small. (The “S” is a unit of time which roughly corresponds to molecular size.) The identification of small structural motifs and their organization into larger subassemblies is of fundamental interest in the prediction and design of 3D structures of large RNAs such as the ribosome. This problem has been studied only sparsely, as most of the existing work is limited to the characterization and discovery of motifs in RNA secondary structures.
