Abstract
Among the nucleic acids, the single-stranded RNA molecules have the highest potential to form a large variety of structures and to undergo quite different structural transitions. The determination of their structure and structural transitions is a prerequisite for understanding their function in replication, transcription, translation, and regulation. In many cases the problem of RNA structure is particularly difficult, for in addition to the secondary structure formed by Watson-Crick base pairs and wobble base pairs, a complicated tertiary structure may exist that cannot be described by a few prototypes of interactions. These general statements hold for viroids as well as for transfer RNA, ribosomal RNA, small nuclear RNA, messenger RNA, and viral RNA. To date, the structure and structural transitions are best understood with tRNA, to a great deal as a consequence of x-ray analysis, whereas only incomplete data exist on the other RNAs. In this chapter it will be shown that, with the exception of tRNA, the structure formation of viroid RNA is best understood among all RNAs. Furthermore, these results have gained some relevance for the understanding of the function of viroids.
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