Title
Temperature and Mutation Switches in the Secondary Structure of Small RNAs
Abstract
Conformational switching in the secondary structure of RNAs has recently attracted considerable attention, fostered by the discovery of 驴riboswitches驴 in living organisms. These are genetic control elements that were found in bacteria and offer a unique regulation mechanism based on switching between two highly stable states, separated by an energy barrier between them. In riboswitches, the energy barrier is crossed by direct metabolite binding, which facilitates regulation by allosteric means. However, other event triggers can cause switching to occur, such as single-point mutations and slight variations in temperature. Examples of switches with these event triggers have already been reported experimentally in the past. Here, our goal is to computationally design small RNA switches that rely on these triggers. Towards this end, our computer simulations utilize a variety of different similarity measures to assess the distances between an initial state and triggered states, based on the topology of the secondary structure itself. We describe these combined similarity measures that rely on both coarse-grained and fine-grained graph representations of the RNA secondary structure. As a result of our simulations, we provide some candidate sequences of approximately 30- 50 nt, along with the exact triggers that drive the switching. The event triggers under consideration can be modelled by mfold or the Vienna package. To begin with, we concentrate on designing small temperature and mutation switches.
Year
DOI
Venue
2005
10.1109/CSBW.2005.131
CSB Workshops
Keywords
Field
DocType
mutation switches,small rna switch,combined similarity measure,vienna package,small temperature,allosteric mean,rna secondary structure,energy barrier,unique regulation mechanism,different similarity measure,secondary structure,small rnas,macromolecules,molecular biophysics,genetics,graph representation,point mutation,computer simulation,microorganisms
Graph,Small RNA,Riboswitch,Stable states,Computer science,Molecular biophysics,Bioinformatics,Protein secondary structure,Nucleic acid secondary structure,Mutation
Conference
ISBN
Citations 
PageRank 
0-7695-2442-7
0
0.34
References 
Authors
5
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Assaf Avihoo1282.22
Danny Barash226524.21