MEASURING THE THERMODYNAMICS OF RNA SECONDARY STRUCTURE FORMATION

The thermodynamics of RNA secondary structure formation in small model systems provides a database Sol-predicting RNA structure from sequenc e. Methods Sor making these measurements are reviewed with emphasis on optical methods and treatment of experimental errors. Analysis of exp erimental results in terms of simple nearest-neighbor models is presen ted. Some measured sequence dependences of non-Watson-Crick motifs are discussed. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.