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The elusive quest for RNA knots

Physical entanglement, and particularly knots arise spontaneously in equilibrated polymers that are sufficiently long and densely packed. Biopolymers are no exceptions: knots have long been known to occur in proteins as well as in encapsidated viral DNA. The rapidly growing number of RNA structures...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Burton, Aaron S., Di Stefano, Marco, Lehman, Niles, Orland, Henri, Micheletti, Cristian
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Taylor & Francis 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4829277/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26828280
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15476286.2015.1132069
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author Burton, Aaron S.
Di Stefano, Marco
Lehman, Niles
Orland, Henri
Micheletti, Cristian
author_facet Burton, Aaron S.
Di Stefano, Marco
Lehman, Niles
Orland, Henri
Micheletti, Cristian
author_sort Burton, Aaron S.
collection PubMed
description Physical entanglement, and particularly knots arise spontaneously in equilibrated polymers that are sufficiently long and densely packed. Biopolymers are no exceptions: knots have long been known to occur in proteins as well as in encapsidated viral DNA. The rapidly growing number of RNA structures has recently made it possible to investigate the incidence of physical knots in this type of biomolecule, too. Strikingly, no knots have been found to date in the known RNA structures. In this Point of View Article we discuss the absence of knots in currently available RNAs and consider the reasons why knots in RNA have not yet been found, despite the expectation that they should exist in Nature. We conclude by singling out a number of RNA sequences that, based on the properties of their predicted secondary structures, are good candidates for knotted RNAs.
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spelling pubmed-48292772016-04-28 The elusive quest for RNA knots Burton, Aaron S. Di Stefano, Marco Lehman, Niles Orland, Henri Micheletti, Cristian RNA Biol Point of View Physical entanglement, and particularly knots arise spontaneously in equilibrated polymers that are sufficiently long and densely packed. Biopolymers are no exceptions: knots have long been known to occur in proteins as well as in encapsidated viral DNA. The rapidly growing number of RNA structures has recently made it possible to investigate the incidence of physical knots in this type of biomolecule, too. Strikingly, no knots have been found to date in the known RNA structures. In this Point of View Article we discuss the absence of knots in currently available RNAs and consider the reasons why knots in RNA have not yet been found, despite the expectation that they should exist in Nature. We conclude by singling out a number of RNA sequences that, based on the properties of their predicted secondary structures, are good candidates for knotted RNAs. Taylor & Francis 2016-02-01 /pmc/articles/PMC4829277/ /pubmed/26828280 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15476286.2015.1132069 Text en © 2016 The Author(s). Published with license by Taylor & Francis Group, LLC http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/), which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted.
spellingShingle Point of View
Burton, Aaron S.
Di Stefano, Marco
Lehman, Niles
Orland, Henri
Micheletti, Cristian
The elusive quest for RNA knots
title The elusive quest for RNA knots
title_full The elusive quest for RNA knots
title_fullStr The elusive quest for RNA knots
title_full_unstemmed The elusive quest for RNA knots
title_short The elusive quest for RNA knots
title_sort elusive quest for rna knots
topic Point of View
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4829277/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26828280
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15476286.2015.1132069
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