thumb|500px|Schematic representation of factors promoting R-loop formation and stabilization An R-loop is a three-stranded nucleic acid structure, composed of a DNA:RNA hybrid and the associated non-template single-stranded DNA. R-loops may be formed in a variety of circumstances and may be tolerated or cleared by cellular components. The term "R-loop" was given to reflect the similarity of these structures to D-loops; the "R" in this case represents the involvement of an RNA moiety.
thumb|500px|Schematic representation of factors promoting R-loop formation and stabilization An R-loop is a three-stranded nucleic acid structure, composed of a DNA:RNA hybrid and the associated non-template single-stranded DNA. R-loops may be formed in a variety of circumstances and may be tolerated or cleared by cellular components. The term "R-loop" was given to reflect the similarity of these structures to D-loops; the "R" in this case represents the involvement of an RNA moiety.
In the laboratory, R-loops can be created by transcription of DNA sequences (for example those that have a high GC content) that favor annealing of the RNA behind the progressing RNA polymerase. At least 100bp of DNA:RNA hybrid is required to form a stable R-loop structure. R-loops may also be created by the hybridization of mature mRNA with double-stranded DNA under conditions favoring the formation of a DNA-RNA hybrid; in this case, the intron regions (which have been spliced out of the mRNA) form single-stranded DNA loops, as they cannot hybridize with complementary sequence in the mRNA.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).