RNAloops: a database of RNA multiloops.

Motivation: Knowledge of the 3D structure of RNA supports discovering its functions and is crucial for designing drugs and modern therapeutic solutions. Thus, much attention is devoted to experimental determination and computational prediction targeting the global fold of RNA and its local substructures. The latter include multi-branched loops-functionally significant elements that highly affect the spatial shape of the entire molecule.

RNA-Puzzles Round IV: 3D structure predictions of four ribozymes and two aptamers.

RNA-Puzzles is a collective endeavor dedicated to the advancement and improvement of RNA 3D structure prediction. With agreement from crystallographers, the RNA structures are predicted by various groups before the publication of the crystal structures. We now report the prediction of 3D structures for six RNA sequences: four nucleolytic ribozymes and two riboswitches.

RNA-Puzzles toolkit: a computational resource of RNA 3D structure benchmark datasets, structure manipulation, and evaluation tools.

Significant improvements have been made in the efficiency and accuracy of RNA 3D structure prediction methods during the succeeding challenges of RNA-Puzzles, a community-wide effort on the assessment of blind prediction of RNA tertiary structures. The RNA-Puzzles contest has shown, among others, that the development and validation of computational methods for RNA fold prediction strongly depend on the benchmark datasets and the structure comparison algorithms. Yet, there has been no systematic benchmark set or decoy structures available for the 3D structure prediction of RNA, hindering the standardization of comparative tests in the modeling of RNA structure.

LCS-TA to identify similar fragments in RNA 3D structures.

Background: In modern structural bioinformatics, comparison of molecular structures aimed to identify and assess similarities and differences between them is one of the most commonly performed procedures. It gives the basis for evaluation of in silico predicted models. It constitutes the preliminary step in searching for structural motifs.

StructAnalyzer - a tool for sequence versus structure similarity analysis.

In the world of RNAs and proteins, similarities at the level of primary structures of two comparable molecules usually correspond to structural similarities at the tertiary level. In other words, measures of sequence and structure similarities are in general correlated - a high value of sequence similarity imposes a high value of structural similarity. However, important exceptions that stay in contrast to this general rule can be identified.