RNA secondary structure prediction using highly parallel computers.

An RNA secondary structure prediction method using a highly parallel computer is reported. We focus on finding thermodynamically stable structures of a single-stranded RNA molecule. Our approach is based on a parallel combinatorial method which calculates the free energy of a molecule as the sum of the free energies of all the physically possible hydrogen bonds. Our parallel algorithm finds many highly stable structures all at once, while most of the conventional prediction methods find only the most stable structure. The important idea in our algorithm is search tree pruning, with dynamic load balancing across the processor elements in a parallel computer. Software tools for visualization and classification of secondary structures are also presented using the sequence of cadang-cadang coconut viroid as an example. Our software system runs on CM-5.