UB team describes new biochemistry for RNA at low temperatures. In this work, the team used the mechanical unfolding of RNA to understand precisely the diverse forms that RNA takes when it folds in on itself. The study, led by Prof. Fèlix Ritort, The Small Biosystems Lab, which has been published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences describes for the first time how the process of RNA folding at low temperatures may open up a novel perspective on primordial biochemistry and the evolution of life on the planet. As Prof. Fèlix Ritort says “the folded structures of biological molecules, from DNA to RNA and proteins, determine their biological action. Without structure there is no function, and without function there is no life”.
Rissone, P.; Severino, A.; Pastor, I.; Ritort, F. «Universal cold RNA phase transitions». Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), August 2024. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.240831312
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Image: An artistic representation of the temperature dependence of the RNA free-energy landscape (FEL) of folding. The authors showed that RNAs undergo a phase transition in the cold and misfold due to the FEL changing with temperature. Upon lowering the temperature, the smooth desertic landscape where the system readily finds the energy global minimum to fold into the native hairpin makes way to deep gorges separated by high barriers. The system gets trapped in these local minima that yield a diversity of misfolded conformations. Image: Paolo Rissone