Activation-energy landscape for metastable RNA folding

We consider the relaxation kinetics for folding intermediate structures in random uncorrelated RNA chains. Folding patterns correspond to intrachain secondary structures. We make use of a Monte Carlo simulation that mimics a Markov process to study the refolding dynamics. This is done to obtain the time-dependent behavior of the activation energies. We conclude that the mechanism of relaxation to the equilibrium secondary structure is compatible with the random-energy model as the thermodynamic limit is approached.