Linear Trees, Lattice Walks, and RNA Arrays

Abstract

The leftmost column entries of RNA arrays I and II count the RNA numbers that are related to RNA secondary structures from molecular biology. RNA secondary structures sometimes have mutations and wobble pairs. Mutations are random changes that occur in a structure, and wobble pairs are known as non-Watson–Crick base pairs. We used topics from RNA combinatorics and Riordan array theory to establish connections among combinatorial objects related to linear trees, lattice walks, and RNA arrays. In this paper, we establish interesting new explicit bijections (one-to-one correspondences) involving certain subclasses of linear trees, lattice walks, and RNA secondary structures. We provide an interesting generalized lattice walk interpretation of RNA array I. In addition, we provide a combinatorial interpretation of RNA array II as RNA secondary structures with n bases and k base-point mutations where ω of the structures contain wobble base pairs. We also establish an explicit bijection between RNA structures with mutations and wobble bases and a certain subclass of lattice walks.