M. Tacker, W. Fontana, P. F. Stadler and P. Schuster
We present and study the behavior of a simple kinetic model for the melting of RNA secondary structures, given that those structures are known. The model is then used as a map that assigns structure dependent overall rate constants of melting (or refolding) to a sequence. This induces a "landscape" of reaction rates, or activation energies, over the space of sequences with fixed length. We study the distribution and the correlation structure of these activation energies.