RNA Chaperones and the RNA Folding Problem

Functional and structural inter-relationships of RNA and proteins in the execution and control of biological processes such as RNA processing, RNA splicing, and translation are increasingly apparent. In this minireview, I present an RNA chaperone hypothesis, which fosters the view that constraints imposed by fundamental problems in the folding of RNA have profoundly influenced the nature of RNA/protein interactions in biology. The origin of this view is outlined as follows. RNA has two fundamental folding problems: a tendency to fold into and become kinetically trapped in alternative conformations and a difficulty in specifying a single tertiary structure that is thermodynamically strongly favored over competing structures.