Mathematical and Biological Modelling of RNA Secondary Structure and Its Effects on Gene Expression

Hughes, T.A.; McElwaine, J.N.

doi:10.1080/10273660600906416

Mathematical and Biological Modelling of RNA Secondary Structure and Its Effects on Gene Expression

Hughes, T.A.; McElwaine, J.N.

Authors

T.A. Hughes

Professor Jim Mcelwaine james.mcelwaine@durham.ac.uk
Professor

Abstract

Secondary structures within the 5′ untranslated regions of messenger RNAs can have profound effects on the efficiency of translation of their messages and thereby on gene expression. Consequently they can act as important regulatory motifs in both physiological and pathological settings. Current approaches to predicting the secondary structure of these RNA sequences find the structure with the global-minimum free energy. However, since RNA folds progressively from the 5′ end when synthesised or released from the translational machinery, this may not be the most probable structure. We discuss secondary structure prediction based on local-minimisation of free energy with thermodynamic fluctuations as nucleotides are added to the 3′ end and show that these can result in different secondary structures. We also discuss approaches for studying the extent of the translational inhibition specified by structures within the 5′ untranslated region.

Citation

Hughes, T., & McElwaine, J. (2006). Mathematical and Biological Modelling of RNA Secondary Structure and Its Effects on Gene Expression. Computational and mathematical methods in medicine, 7(1), 37-43. https://doi.org/10.1080/10273660600906416

Journal Article Type	Article
Acceptance Date	Jun 23, 2006
Publication Date	Mar 1, 2006
Deposit Date	May 23, 2013
Publicly Available Date	Sep 17, 2015
Journal	Computational and Mathematical Methods in Medicine
Print ISSN	1748-670X
Electronic ISSN	1748-6718
Publisher	Taylor and Francis
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	7
Issue	1
Pages	37-43
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/10273660600906416
Keywords	UTR, RNA folding, Dynamic programming, Translational regulation.

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Copyright Statement
© 2006 Hindawi Publishing Corporation. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.