Moments of the Boltzmann distribution for RNA secondary structures

István Miklós, Irmtraud M. Meyer*, Borbála Nagy

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

24 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

We here present a dynamic programming algorithm which is capable of calculating arbitrary moments of the Boltzmann distribution for RNA secondary structures. We have implemented the algorithm in a program called RNA-variance and investigate the difference between the Boltzmann distribution of biological and random RNA sequences. We find that the minimum free energy structure of biological sequences has a higher probability in the Boltzmann distribution than random sequences. Moreover, we show that the free energies of biological sequences have a smaller variance than random sequences and that the minimum free energy of biological sequences is closer to the expected free energy of the rest of the structures than that of random sequences. These results suggest that biologically functional RNA sequences not only require a thermodynamically stable minimum free energy structure, but also an ensemble of structures whose free energies are close to the minimum free energy.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1031-1047
Number of pages17
JournalBulletin of Mathematical Biology
Volume67
Issue number5
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2005
Externally publishedYes

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