RNA Structure and Modeling: Progress and Techniques.

RNA modeling has become an increasingly attractive field for researchers as new functions for RNA are identified and characterized. However, our progress in determining three-dimensional structures is still behind our discovery of functional RNA molecules. Continuous development of experimental methods has enabled us to characterize biochemical and physical properties of the RNA molecules. Advancement in computer simulation and modeling is bringing us closer to the all-atomic-detail modeling. But there is still a big gap between our current achievement and our goal of predicting the three-dimensional structure based on their sequence information. In this chapter, we will go over the important progresses and techniques of structure characterization of nucleic acids, as an introduction for readers to wider range of approaches.