Chemical probes for higher-order structure in RNA.

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Three chemical reactions can probe the secondary and tertiary interactions of RNA molecules in solution. Dimethyl sulfate monitors the N-7 of guanosines and senses tertiary interactions there, diethyl pyrocarbonate detects stacking of adenosines, and an alternate dimethyl sulfate reaction examines the N-3 of cytidines and thus probes base pairing. The reactions work between 0 degrees C and 90 degrees C and at pH 4.5--8.5 in a variety of buffers. As an example we follow the progressive denaturation of yeast tRNAPhe terminally labeled with 32P as the tertiary and secondary structures sequentially melt out. A single autoradiograph of a terminally labeled molecule locates regions of higher-order structure and identifies the bases involved.