In the post-genomics age, the realization that only 1.5percent of the entire human genome codes for actual proteins and the discovery of micro-RNAs and riboswitches has spurred the re-evaluation of inter/intragenic regions that in the past were dismissed as "selfish" or "junk DNA". This reevaluation process has clearly demonstrated that sequence information alone is not sufficient to reveal the function of the vast majority of the sequences that are translated into non-coding RNA. Indeed, the function of such species is less likely to depend on the associated genetic information than on their 3D structure, which determines their ability to bind proteins, metabolites, and other cellular components. This observation has greatly increased the demand not only for structure elucidation, but also for unambiguous information about the identity of cognate ligands, the nature of their interactions, and the effects of binding on structure and dynamics.
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