Modeling RNA Secondary Structure with Sequence Comparison and Experimental Mapping Data (Biophysical Journal)

Secondary structure prediction is an important problem in RNA bioinformatics because knowledge of structure is critical to understanding the functions of RNA sequences. Significant improvements in prediction accuracy have recently been demonstrated though the incorporation of experimentally obtained structural information, for instance using selective 2´-hydroxyl acylation analyzed by primer extension (SHAPE) mapping. However, such mapping data is currently available only for a limited number of RNA sequences.