Conformational entropy of the RNA phosphate backbone and its contribution to the folding free energy

While major contributors to the free energy of RNA tertiary structures such as basepairing, base-stacking, and charge and counterion interactions have been studied extensively, little is known about the intrinsic free energy of the backbone. To assess the magnitude of the entropic strains along the phosphate backbone and their impact on the folding free energy, we have formulated a mathematical treatment for computing the volume of the main-chain torsion-angle conformation space between every pair of nucleobases along any sequence to compute the corresponding backbone entropy. To validate this method, we have compared the computed conformational entropies against a statistical free energy analysis of structures in the crystallographic database from several-thousand backbone conformations between nearest-neighbor nucleobases as well as against extensive computer simulations. Using this calculation, we analyzed the backbone entropy of several ribozymes and riboswitches and found that their entropic strains are highly localized along their sequences. The total entropic penalty due to steric congestions in the backbone for the native fold can be as high as 2.4 cal/K/mol per nucleotide for these medium and large RNAs, producing a contribution to the overall free energy of up to 0.72 kcal/mol per nucleotide. For these RNAs, we found that low-entropy high-strain residues are predominantly located at loops with tight turns and at tertiary interaction platforms with unusual structural motifs.