STATISTICS OF RNA MELTING KINETICS

We present and study the behavior of a simple kinetic model for the me lting of RNA secondary structures, given that those structures are kno wn. The model is then used as a map that assigns structure dependent o verall rate constants of melting (or refolding) to a sequence. This in duces a ''landscape'' of reaction rates, or activation energies, over the space of sequences with fixed length. We study the distribution an d the correlation structure of these activation energies.