On the Effectiveness of Rebuilding RNA Secondary Structures from Sequence Chunks

Despite the computing power of emerging technologies, predicting long RNA secondary structures with thermodynamics-based methods is still infeasible, especially if the structures include complex motifs such as pseudoknots. This paper presents preliminary results on rebuilding RNA secondary structures by an extensive and systematic sampling of nucleotide chunks. The rebuilding approach merges the significant motifs found in the secondary structures of the single chunks. The extensive sampling and prediction of nucleotide chunks are supported by grid technology as part of the RNAVLab functionality. Significant motifs are identified in the chunk secondary structures and merged in a single structure based on their recurrences and other statistical insights. A critical analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, and future developments of our method is presented.