Monomolecular RNA Two-state Conformational Equilibria

For the reasons outlined above, our efforts concentrated on the design and experimental verification of short RNA sequences which can adopt two different secondary structures. Implicit was the principal question what is the minimum size of an RNA that is still able to appear in different defined shapes In this context, the closest study we found was a theoretical approach by C. Flamm et al. [28], who developed an algorithm to design multistable RNAs [29]. To the best of our knowledge, however, there is no experimental data verifying the multistable sequence examples suggested therein. 

We therefore considered NMR spectroscopy as a possible tool to investigate the 

Comparative imino proton NMR spectroscopy as described above proved a useful 

The Influence of Nudeobase Methylations on Secondary Structure Equilibria, as Exemplified by the Ribosomal Helix 45 Motif 

As mentioned in the Introduction, we are especially interested in the effect of nucleoside modifications on RNA structure. The equilibrium sequences introduced above were selected for this reason. The position of the conformational equilibrium of the sequence constructs is expected to be highly sensitive to chemical alteration, e.g. methylation of nucleobases. 

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