Status
Completed

Period
17 September – 10 October 2021

Applicant
Prof. Anže Božič

Home Institution
Department of Theoretical Physics, Jozef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Host Contact
Prof. Luca Tubiana

Host Institution
Faculty of Physics, Università di Trento

Aim of the mission
The aim of the STSM was to establish a collaboration between the applicant and the host centred on the role of RNA structure and topology for its packing in confinement by describing RNA as a branched self-avoiding polymer. The results should advance our knowledge of the role that topological properties of RNA play in its interactions with a confining surface in general and the puzzle of the compact topological properties of viral RNA genomes in particular.

Summary of the Results
The main results obtained during the STSM relate to the description of RNAs as branched polymers. We worked out a way to extract the scaling parameters of viral RNAs from the scaling of distributions of rebranching of individual RNA trees (obtained from secondary structure graphs). Another main result of the STSM is the set-up for a project that will explore scaling parameters of branched polymers in confinement, making it possible to study how different topologies of RNA behave under confinement.

Dissemination
Several future collaborations have successfully been set up during the STSM to work on different projects. The STSM resulted in a joint work which has been submitted for publication and another work currently in preparation.