Regensburg 2004 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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DY: Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 23: Statistical Physics of RNA

DY 23.4: Hauptvortrag

Dienstag, 9. März 2004, 12:30–13:00, H3

Statistical Physics of RNA Secondary Structures — •Ralf Bundschuh — Department of Physics, The Ohio State University. 174 West 18th Avenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1106, U.S.A.

In addition to its importance for the biological function of RNA molecules RNA secondary structure formation is an interesting system from the statistical physics point of view. The ensemble of secondary structures of random RNA sequences shows a rich phase diagram with distinct native, denatured, molten, and glassy phases separated by thermodynamical phase transitions. These phase transitions are driven by the competition between thermal fluctuations, the disorder frozen into the specific sequence of a given RNA molecule, and the evolutionary bias towards the formation of some biologically relevant structure. Yet, in contrast to the protein folding problem which is driven by very similar principles and shows a similar phase diagram RNA secondary structure formation can be represented by a simple diagrammatic language which allows the application of various analytical and numerical methods. This makes RNA secondary structure formation an ideal model system for heteropolymer folding. In the talk, I will characterize and explain the complex behaviour of RNA folding using several simple models and discuss possible implications to biological processes.