Assemble2: an interactive graphical environment dedicated to the study and construction of RNA architectures

Assemble2 is an interactive graphical environment allowing a biologist to easily realize top-down and bottom-up approaches targeting the study and the creation of large and intricate RNA architectures. It consists of several interconnected parts: (i) a Java graphical interface allowing to visualize and interactively modify RNA 2D structures, (ii) the 3D viewer UCSF Chimera and (iii) a set of web services wrapping algorithms predicting 2D and 3D RNA structures. Assemble2 has been used efficiently for the 3D modeling of several macromolecular complexes. Notably, it has been an essential part of the bioinformatics pipelines leading to the publication of high-resolution cryoEM structures of ribosomes for several eukaryotic organisms, from yeast to human [1][2][3].