Co-transcriptional Folding

Overview

Co-transcriptional folding is the process of RNA or strands of a protein being transcribed while simultaneously folding over on itself. Previous algorithms and computations that attempted to determine how a sequence of RNA bases would fold after they were transcribed generally treated the two steps asynchronously, with transcription being completed before folding ever occured. Now, however, researchers have discovered just how important co-transcriptional folding is in determining the final shape that transcribed RNA or protein strands becomes. Newer models have found that the acknowledgement and speed of co-transcriptional folding both affect the final shape that comes out of an RNA sequence.