Canonical RNA Pseudoknot Structures

Abstract
In this paper, we study k-noncrossing, σ-canonical RNA pseudoknot structures with minimum arc-length greater or equal to four. Let Tk, σ[4] (n) denote the number of these structures. We derive exact enumeration results by computing the generating function Tk, σ[4] (z) = ∑n Tk, σ[4] (n)zn and derive the asymptotic formulas Tk, 3[4] (n) ∼ ck n−(k−1)2−(k−1/2) (γk, 3[4])n for k = 3, …, 9. In particular, we have for k = 3, T3, 3[4] (n) ∼ c3 n−5 2.0348n. Our results show that the set of biophysically relevant RNA pseudoknot structures is surprisingly small and suggest a new structure class as target for prediction algorithms.

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