Question

Which of the following about the RNAFold is incorrect?

(a) It extends the sequence alignment to the vicinity of the optimal diagonals to calculate thermodynamic stability of alternative structures

(b) It incorporates a partition function

(c) It doesn’t necessarily use a partition function

(d) It aims to select a number of statistically most probable structures in one of its steps

I have been asked this question during an interview.

This interesting question is from Ab Initio Approach topic in division RNA Structure Prediction of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Correct answer is (c) It doesn’t necessarily use a partition function

Explanation: Based on both thermodynamic calculations and the partition function, a number of alternative structures that may be suboptimal are provided. The collection of the predicted structures may provide a better estimate of plausible foldings of an RNA molecule than the predictions by Mfold.