Document DOI: 10.1209/epl/i2002-00128-3
Europhys. Lett., 59 (6) , pp. 903-909 (2002)
Phases of the secondary structures of RNA sequences
R. Bundschuh1, 2 and T. Hwa11 Department of Physics, UC San Diego-La Jolla, CA 92093-0319, USA
2 Physics Department, The Ohio State University - Columbus, OH 43210-1106, USA
(Received 5 February 2002; accepted in final form 21 June 2002)
Abstract
Formation of RNA secondary structures is an example of the
sequence-structure problem omnipresent in molecular biophysics. A
basic theoretical issue concerns the phase behaviour of self-attracting
random RNA sequences. By studying a simplified toy model of RNA
folding, we show that there are two distinct possible phases for the
random RNA below its melting transition -a molten phase in
which an exponentially large number of allowed secondary structures
have comparable free energies and coexist in thermal
equilibrium, and a glass phase in which the equilibrium ensemble
is dominated by one or a few structures with much lower free
energies.
87.15.Aa - Biomolecules: Theory and modeling; computer simulation.
05.40.-a - Fluctuation phenomena, random processes, noise, and Brownian motion.
87.15.Cc - Biomolecules: Folding and sequence analysis.
© EDP Sciences 2002