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Science 27 April 2001:
Vol. 292. no. 5517, pp. 653 - 654
DOI: 10.1126/science.1060884
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Perspectives

RNA STRUCTURE:
Pulling on Hair(pins)

J. M. Fernandez, S. Chu, A. F. Oberhauser

Using single-molecule techniques, Liphardt et al. have analyzed the folding and unfolding reactions of a series of nested RNA molecules. In this Perspective, Fernandez et al. discuss the surprising observation that the smallest of these RNAs, a simple hairpin structure, undergoes an all-or-nothing transition between the folded and the unfolded state, rather than the RNA strands unzipping.

J. M. Fernandez and A. F. Oberhauser are in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics, Mayo Foundation, Rochester, MN 55905, USA. S. Chu is in the Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305-4060, USA.

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THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES:
Direct measurement of the full, sequence-dependent folding landscape of a nucleic Acid..
M. T. Woodside, P. C. Anthony, W. M. Behnke-Parks, K. Larizadeh, D. Herschlag, and S. M. Block (2006)
Science 314, 1001-1004
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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)