Fig. 2: Mechanical conformers of the mini hammerhead ribozyme.
From: A hammerhead ribozyme selects mechanically stable conformations for catalysis against viral RNA
a Force-extension distribution of the ribozyme unfolding events. The histogram at the top represents the changes in extension during unfolding, while the left histogram shows the distribution of unfolding forces. A total of 462 unfolding events from 263 ribozyme molecules were analyzed, with buffer containing 100 mM NaCl in the absence of substrate RNA and divalent ions. b Gaussian mixture modeling of the force-extension distributions. The distribution of extension changes is fitted with three Gaussians. Cartoons illustrate the conformational sets of the ribozyme. c Three unfolding force distributions are separated according to their corresponding peaks in the distribution of extension changes. Mechanical conformational subsets are indicated by color codes and cartoons. Left, 180; middle, 187; right, 95 data points.
