Abstract

Sampling of RNA folding pathways

RNA molecules play many crucial biological roles, and need to fold into specific conformations to function properly. The folding process takes place over long time scales, up to several hours. RNA molecules also often exhibit metastability, with transitions between alternate folded conformations. To investigate these processes using a detailed description of those molecules, efficient sampling methods are required.

I will present several methods that allow to sample the conformational space of those systems, and highlight their respective strengths when applied to study the energy landscapes of RNA molecules represented with HiRE-RNA, a coarse-grained model of RNA , and how they provide informations relatable to experimental data.