Research highlights - Laboratoire de Recherche en Informatique

Research highlight : AUTOMATED PREDICTION OF THREE-WAY JUNCTION TOPOLOGICAL FAMILIES IN RNA SECONDARY STRUCTURES

		AUTOMATED PREDICTION OF THREE-WAY JUNCTION TOPOLOGICAL FAMILIES IN RNA SECONDARY STRUCTURES 11 February 2012 Alexis Lamiable, Dominique Barth, Alain Denise, Franck Quessette, Sandrine Vial, Éric Westhof. Computational Biology and Chemistry 37 (2012) 1–5
We present an algorithm for automatically predicting the topological family of any RNA three-way junction, given only the information from the secondary structure: the sequence and the Watson–Crick pairings. The parameters of the algorithm have been determined on a data set of 33 three-way junctions whose 3D conformation is known. We applied the algorithm on 53 other junctions and compared the predictions to the real shape of those junctions. We show that the correct answer is selected out of nine possible configurations 64% of the time. Additionally, these results are noticeably improved if homology information is used. The resulting software, Cartaj, is available online and downloadable (with source) at: http://cartaj.lri.fr. Keyword ° Bioinformatics Group ° Algorithms and Complexity ° Bioinformatics Contact ° DENISE Alain