Secondary structure in nucleic acids

Chaperones are needed for nucleic acids as well as proteins. The concept that the proper folding of macromolecules may depend on the activities of helper proteins—molecular chaperones—has recently been extended to nucleic acids, notably RNA. As pointed out above, the formation of secondary structures in nucleic acids is an exothermic process (AH is negative), and thus favored by reductions in temperature. If temperature decreases to very low values, nucleic acids may acquire too high a stability of native secondary structure to function well. Moreover, additional regions of secondary structure may form that disrupt normal functions such as transcription and translation. 

Figure V-4 Examples of secondary structure in nucleic acids.

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