Random matrix theory and ribonucleic acid (RNA) folding
This article discusses a series of recent applications of random matrix theory (RMT) to the problem of RNA folding. It first provides a schematic overview of the RNA folding problem, focusing on the concept of RNA pseudoknots, before considering a simplified framework for describing the folding of an RNA molecule; this framework is given by the statistic mechanical model of a polymer chain of L nucleotides in three dimensions with interacting monomers. The article proceeds by presenting a physical interpretation of the RNA matrix model and analysing the large-N expansion of the matrix integral, along with the pseudoknotted homopolymer chain. It extends previous results about the asymptotic distribution of pseudoknots of a phantom homopolymer chain in the limit of large chain length.