1. Structure and function of RNA   (wikipedia)
2. The 'RNA world' hypothesis
3. Structural levels:
• primary, secondary, tertiary
• Structural elements: hairpin loop, (stem, loop, bulge, ...)
• experimental methods
4. Representations without psuedoknots
5. Algorithms for finding optimal secondary structure: Nussinov (article), unafold web-server (M. Zuker)
6. Recursive calculation of partition function
7. RNA folding and Matrix Field Theory (McGenus)
8. Counting secondary structures. [Chandrasekhar, Rev. Mod. 15, 1 (1943)]
9. Thermal denaturation of RNA
10. The melting of a hairpin

Lecture notes

• The RNA world and origins of life
• The Vienna RNA package