Abstract:
Laboratory of Bioinformatics and Protein Engineering, International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, ul. Ks. Trojdena 4, 02-109 Warsaw, and Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Umultowska 89, PL-61-614 Poznan, Poland; email: iamb@genesilico.pl
In addition to mRNAs, whose primary function is transmission of genetic information from DNA to proteins, numerous other classes of RNA molecules exist, which are involved in a variety of functions, such as catalyzing biochemical reactions or performing regulatory roles. In analogy to proteins, the function of these RNAs often depends on 3D structure and dynamics, which are largely determined by the ribonucleotide sequence. Experimental determination of high-resolution RNA structures is both laborious and difficult, and therefore the majority of known RNAs remain structurally uncharacterized. To address this problem, computational structure prediction methods were developed. All computational methods suffer from various limitations that make them generally unreliable for structure prediction of long RNA sequences. However, in many cases the limitations of computational and experimental methods can be overcome by combining these two complementary approaches with each other.
I will present computational methods for prediction of RNA 3D structures and RNA-protein complexes developed in my group, with emphasis on software that can utilize restraints derived from experimental analyzes (SimRNA and PyRy3D). I will also present a method for structure-based RNA sequence design.
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