SHAPE directed RNA folding

Bioinformatics. 2016 Jan 1;32(1):145-7. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btv523. Epub 2015 Sep 9.

Abstract

Summary: Chemical mapping experiments allow for nucleotide resolution assessment of RNA structure. We demonstrate that different strategies of integrating probing data with thermodynamics-based RNA secondary structure prediction algorithms can be implemented by means of soft constraints. This amounts to incorporating suitable pseudo-energies into the standard energy model for RNA secondary structures. As a showcase application for this new feature of the ViennaRNA Package we compare three distinct, previously published strategies to utilize SHAPE reactivities for structure prediction. The new tool is benchmarked on a set of RNAs with known reference structure.

Availability and implementation: The capability for SHAPE directed RNA folding is part of the upcoming release of the ViennaRNA Package 2.2, for which a preliminary release is already freely available at http://www.tbi.univie.ac.at/RNA.

Contact: michael.wolfinger@univie.ac.at

Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Base Sequence
  • Escherichia coli / genetics
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Nucleic Acid Conformation*
  • RNA Folding*
  • RNA, Ribosomal / genetics
  • Thermodynamics

Substances

  • RNA, Ribosomal