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| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2026
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://arxiv.org/abs/2604.15599 |
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Table of Contents:
- Researchers have repeatedly found that the ends of an RNA sequence are significantly closer than expected for a random linear chain. However, we prove that the ends of a branched structure are almost certainly close. Our results are obtained via combinatorial branching models of increasing complexity using tools from multivariate analytic combinatorics. We completely characterize parameters tracking end-to-end distance, including means and variances. Then, we compare to existing datasets of known RNA structures, as well as the minimum free-energy structures of randomized shuffles. We find that the shuffled structures resemble our theoretical distributions while the known RNA structures have similar parameter values but are more concentrated.