 However, a recent study has shown that side-chain conformational entropy can stabilize native structures among alternative compact structures.The conformational entropy of RNA and proteins can be estimated; for example, empirical methods to estimate the loss of conformational entropy in a particular side chain on incorporation into a folded protein can roughly predict the effects of particular point mutations in a protein.Side-chain conformational entropies can be defined as Boltzmann sampling over all possible rotameric states