Prediction of 3D RNA Structures from Sequence Using Energy Landscapes of RNA Dimers: Application to RNA Tetraloops.

Access to the three-dimensional structure of RNA enables an ability to gain a more profound understanding of its biological mechanisms, as well as the ability to design RNA-targeting drugs, which can take advantage of the unique chemical environment imposed by a folded RNA structure. Due to the dynamic and structurally complex properties of RNA, both experimental and traditional computational methods have difficulty in determining RNA's 3D structure. Herein, we introduce TAPERSS (Theoretical Analyses, Prediction, and Evaluation of RNA Structures from Sequence), a physics-based fragment assembly method for predicting 3D RNA structures from sequence.