Combining structure probing data on RNA mutants with evolutionary information reveals RNA-binding interfaces
Abstract
Systematic structure probing experiments (e.g. SHAPE) of RNA mutants such as the mutate-and-map protocol give us a direct access into the genetic robustness of ncRNA structures. Comparative studies of homologous sequences provide a distinct, yet complementary, approach to analyze structural and functional properties of non-coding RNAs. In this paper, we introduce a formal framework to combine the biochemical signal collected from mutate-and-map experiments, with the evolutionary information available in multiple sequence alignments. We apply neutral theory principles to detect complex long-range dependencies between nucleotides of a single stranded RNA, and implement these ideas into a software called aRNhAck. We illustrate the biological significance of this signal and show that the nucleotides networks calculated with aRNhAck are correlated with nucleotides located in RNA-RNA, RNA-protein, RNA-DNA and RNA-ligand interfaces. aRNhAck is freely available at http://csb.cs.mcgill.ca/arnhack.
Domains
Bioinformatics [q-bio.QM]
Origin : Files produced by the author(s)
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