An artistic representation of the temperature dependence of the RNA free-energy landscape (FEL) of folding. The authors showed that RNAs undergo a phase transition in the cold and misfold due to the FEL changing with temperature. Upon lowering the temperature, the smooth desertic landscape where the system readily finds the energy global minimum to fold into the native hairpin makes way to deep gorges separated by high barriers. The system gets trapped in these local minima that yield a diversity of misfolded conformations. Credit: Paolo Rissone
Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a biological molecule with crucial functions in the genetics of organisms and plays a key role in the origin and evolution of life. With a composition quite similar to DNA, RNA is able to perform a variety of biological functions conditioned by its spatial conformation, i.e. the way the molecule folds in on itself. Now, a paper published in the journal Proceedings of the