RT Journal Article SR Electronic T1 The 2D-structure of the T. brucei pre-edited RPS12 mRNA is not affected by macromolecular crowding JF bioRxiv FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory SP 099200 DO 10.1101/099200 A1 W.-Matthias Leeder A1 Stephan Voskuhl A1 H. Ulrich Göringer YR 2017 UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2017/01/09/099200.abstract AB Mitochondrial transcript maturation in African trypanosomes requires RNA editing to convert nucleotide-deficient pre-mRNAs into translatable mRNAs. The different pre-mRNAs have been shown to adopt highly stable 2D-folds, however, it is not known whether these structures resemble the in vivo folds given the extreme “crowding” conditions within the mitochondrion. Here we analyze the effects of macromolecular crowding on the structure of the mitochondrial RPS12 pre-mRNA. We use polyethylene glycol as a macromolecular cosolute and monitor the structure of the RNA globally and with nucleotide resolution. We demonstrate that crowding has no impact on the 2D-fold and we conclude that the MFE-structure in dilute solvent conditions represents a good proxy for the folding of the pre-mRNA in its mitochondrial solvent context.