MicroRNAs, by regulating the expression of hundreds of target genes, play critical roles in developmental biology and the etiology of numerous diseases, including cancer. As a vast amount of microRNA expression profile data are now publicly available, the integration of microRNA expression data sets with gene expression profiles is a key research problem in life science research.
We used a machine learning method, the nearest neighbor algorithm (NNA), to learn the relationship between miRNAs and their target proteins, generating a predictor which can then judge whether a new miRNA-target pair is true or not. We acquired 198 positive (true) miRNA-target pairs from Tarbase and the literature, and generated 4,888 negative (false) pairs through random combination. A 0/1 system and the frequencies of single nucleotides and di-nucleotides were used to encode miRNAs into vectors while various physicochemical parameters were used to encode the targets.
We describe miTRATA, the first web-based tool for microRNA Truncation and Tailing Analysis--the analysis of 3' modifications of microRNAs including the loss or gain of nucleotides relative to the canonical sequence. miTRATA is implemented in Python (version 3) and employs parallel processing modules to enhance its scalability when analyzing multiple small RNA (sRNA) sequencing datasets. It utilizes miRBase, currently version 21, as a source of known microRNAs for analysis. miTRATA notifies user(s) via email to download as well as visualize the results online.
The computational identification of non-coding RNA regions on the genome is currently receiving much attention. However, it is essentially harder than gene-finding problems for protein-coding regions because non-coding RNA sequences do not have strong statistical signals. Since comparative sequence analysis is effective for non-coding RNA detection, efficient computational methods are expected for structural alignment of RNA sequences.
The miRBase database is the central and official repository for miRNAs and the current release is miRBase version 21.0. Name changes in different miRBase releases cause inconsistencies in miRNA names from version to version. When working with only a small number of miRNAs the translation can be done manually. However, with large sets of miRNAs, the necessary correction of such inconsistencies becomes burdensome and error-prone.
CePa is an R package aiming to find significant pathways through network topology information. The package has several advantages compared with current pathway enrichment tools. First, pathway node instead of single gene is taken as the basic unit when analysing networks to meet the fact that genes must be constructed into complexes to hold normal functions. Second, multiple network centralities are applied simultaneously to measure importance of nodes from different aspects to make a full view on the biological system.
MiRNAs are short, non-coding molecules that negatively regulate gene expression and thereby play several important roles in living organisms. Dozens of computational methods for miRNA-related research have been developed, which greatly differ in various aspects. The substantial availability of difficult-to-compare approaches makes it challenging for the user to select a proper tool and prompts the need for a solution that will collect and categorize all the methods.
Our database aim to make it easy for researchers to find the right tools or data source for their own specific study in miRNA field. Now we have collect >1000 tools. This database will update when every new 100 tools add in. Last update time 22nd April, 2018 (v1.2).
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