Jerome Waldispuhl
The broad range of functions supported by RNAs is achieved through specific structures which have (presumably) been optimized through evolution. Through a efficient exploration of the mutation landscape, we apply statistical mechanics techniques to design a novel computational framework, RNAmutants, for estimating the evolutionary pressure that has been applied on a sequence.
We have successfully applied RNAmutants to investigate deleterious mutations(mutations that radically modify secondary structure) in the Hepatitis C virus cis-acting replication element and to evaluate the evolutionary pressureapplied on different regions of the HIV trans-activation response element.
We hope that there will be long-term potential applications of RNAmutants in de novo RNA design and drug design against RNA viruses.