How does Mfold work?? - ... and what to the deltaG values represent? (Nov/25/2010 )

Hi all!

I have used Mfold to predict structures for some RNA molecules. The info on the Mfold website says that it uses energy-minimising algorithms to calculate possible RNA structures. So does this mean that only the most energetically favorable structures are plotted i.e. pair up G-C first? The output also gives deltaG values - so is this the amount of energy released upon the RNA folding?? What is more energetically favorable, a higher negative number e.g. deltaG = -13.6 or a lower negative number e.g. deltaG = -7.4??

Thanks!
P

http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/31/13/3406.long should answer your questions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gibbs_free_energy just for fun.