RNA Structure and Function
Dongyou Liu
Abstract
Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymer of nucleotides each consisting of a ribose, a phosphate, and a nitrogenous base (A, C, G or U) and assumes a primary (linear sequence), secondary (helices, bulges, loops, and junctions), tertiary the local conformation in secondary-structure junctions, the formation of sequence-specific interactions, and the formation of stabilizing stacking and backbone interactions), quaternary (supermolecular organization such as kissing-loop dimerization and homo-oligomer formation) or quinary (weak and nonspecific interaction with cellular metabolites) structure because of the interactions among its components. Depending on whether or not it encodes protein, RNA is separated into coding (mRNA) and noncoding RNA (tRNA, rRNA, snRNA, snoRNA, PASR, piRNA, miRNA, siRNA, lncRNA). mRNA carries genetic instruction to ribosome for translation into specific protein and contains binding sites for RNA binding proteins and miRNAs, while noncoding RNAs assist protein synthesis and perform regulatory, structural, catalytic and other functions in cells. Common techniques for analyzing and determining RNA structure include X-ray crystallography, nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM), chemical probing, and modification interference mapping. However, fast, high throughput, and powerful computational approaches (e.g., knowledge-based methods, learning-based methods, and RNA tertiary structure modeling methods) are increasingly utilized to define and predict RNA structure and function. Furthermore, RNA structure and function are also exploited to for disease diagnosis, vaccine development, and therapeutic design.