RNA & DNA Secondary Structure

Minimum-free-energy folding of one sequence, or of two sequences together — hairpins, bulges, interior and multi loops, with the full Turner nearest-neighbour model at any temperature.

Predicts the secondary structure a sequence folds into: which bases pair, what loops form and how much free energy the fold releases. Paste one sequence to see how it folds on itself — the hairpin that swallows a primer's 3′ end, the loop a LAMP primer has to open, the fold of an sgRNA. Paste two to see them interact.

The energy model is the complete Turner nearest-neighbour set, including the measured 1×1, 2×1 and 2×2 interior-loop tables and the tri-, tetra- and hexaloop bonuses, rescaled by enthalpy to the temperature you choose. Everything is computed in your browser.

Sequences
Conditions

Folding time grows with the cube of the length: a 300-base sequence takes about a second, 1000 bases roughly half a minute. The calculation runs in a background thread, so the page stays usable while it works.

Watson–Crick pairs in teal, G·U / G·T wobble in amber; the second strand is drawn in red.
Every pair is an arc; nested arcs are a stem, crossing strands are the two molecules.

Click a structure to draw it.

Need details? The energy model, its parameters and the limits of the prediction are documented in Help: Secondary Structure
Related: PrimerAnalyser reports self-dimers for a single oligo, PrimersList screens a whole set for cross-dimers.