Probing RNA Folding by Hydroxyl Radical Footprinting

In recent years RNA molecules have emerged as central players in the regulation of gene expression. Many of these noncoding RNAs possess well-defined, complex, three-dimensional structures which are essential for their biological function. In this context, much effort has been devoted to develop computational and experimental techniques for RNA structure determination. Among available experimental tools to investigate the higher-order folding of structured RNAs, hydroxyl radical probing stands as one of the most informative and reliable ones. Hydroxyl radicals are oxidative species that cleave the nucleic acid backbone solely according to the solvent accessibility of individual phosphodiester bonds, with no sequence or secondary structure specificity. Therefore, the cleavage pattern obtained directly reflects the degree of protection/exposure to the solvent of each section of the molecule under inspection, providing valuable information about how these different sections interact together to form the final three-dimensional architecture. In this chapter we describe a robust, accurate and very sensitive hydroxyl radical probing method that can be applied to any structured RNA molecule and is suitable to investigate RNA folding and RNA conformational changes induced by binding of a ligand.