Interpretation of Short RNA Thermal Unfolding Data Obtained by Circular Dichroism Using ChiraKit
Osvaldo Burastero1,2, Kevin Mosca3,4,5, Maria M Garcia-Alai6,7
1European Molecular Biology Laboratory Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany. oburastero@embl-hamburg.de.
Abstract:
Circular dichroism (CD) is a valuable technique for studying the structure and conformational changes of short RNAs. In this chapter, we describe how to analyze CD data from thermal unfolding experiments using the online tool ChiraKit. Different thermodynamic models that explain the CD signal are presented, along with best practices for fitting the data and reporting results. A 37-base pair-long RNA is used as an example. The spectra are first decomposed using singular value decomposition, and then the associated coefficients are fitted with a two-state reversible unfolding model to estimate the melting temperature and enthalpy of unfolding.
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