<p>The <i>RPL22</i> introns are predicted to assume alternate conformations.</p>

Alternate structures of <i>RPL22</i> introns were predicted by RNAfold [<a href="plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0359197#pone.0359197.ref052" target="_blank">52</a>]. Pairing the conserved region (red in (A)) with the 3’complementary sequence element (3’COMP; green in (A)) leads to the formation of an inhibitory structure (denoted ‘I’), while the participation of the 5’complementary sequence element (5’COMP; blue in (A)) results in permissive structures (denoted ‘P’).

Both structure types are predicted to occur in many variations and regardless of the inclusion of intron-bordering regions. The sequence range used for the modeling included 56 nt in front of the intron and 41 nt from exon 2; Minimum free energy (MFE) structures were visualized by RNAfold web server [<a href="plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0359197#pone.0359197.ref052" target="_blank">52</a>,<a href="plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0359197#pone.0359197.ref053" target="_blank">53</a>] and MFE values were calculated by RNAShapes Studio [<a href="plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0359197#pone.0359197.ref054" target="_blank">54</a>].

The colors correspond to the boxes in (A). The additional base pair complementarity in <i>RPL22B</i> (violet) is denoted as “Clamp”.</p>