During recent years, miRNAs have been shown to play important roles in the regulation of gene expression. Accordingly, much effort has been put into the discovery of novel uncharacterized miRNAs in various organisms. miRNAs are structurally defined by a hairpin-loop structure recognized by the two-step processing apparatus, Drosha and Dicer, necessary for the production of mature ~ 22-nucleotide miRNA guide strands.
miRNA is known to regulate up to several hundreds coding genes, thus the integrated analysis of miRNA and mRNA expression data is an important problem. Unfortunately, the integrated analysis is challenging since it needs to consider expression data of two different types, miRNA and mRNA, and target relationship between miRNA and mRNA is not clear, especially when microarray data is used.
Several methods exist for the prediction of precursor miRNAs (pre-miRNAs) in genomic or sRNA-seq (small RNA sequences) data produced by NGS (Next Generation Sequencing). One key information used for this task is the characteristic hairpin structure adopted by pre-miRNAs, that in general are identified using RNA folders whose complexity is cubic in the size of the input. The vast majority of pre-miRNA predictors then rely on further information learned from previously validated miRNAs from the same or a closely related genome for the final prediction of new miRNAs.
The importance of RNA sequence analysis has been increasing since the discovery of various types of non-coding RNAs transcribed in animal cells. Conventional RNA sequence analyses have mainly focused on structured regions, which are stabilized by the stacking energies acting on adjacent base pairs. On the other hand, recent findings regarding the mechanisms of small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) and transcription regulation by microRNAs (miRNAs) indicate the importance of analyzing accessible regions where no base pairs exist.
Small silencing RNAs, including microRNAs, endogenous small interfering RNAs (endo-siRNAs) and Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), have been shown to play important roles in fine-tuning gene expression, defending virus and controlling transposons. Loss of small silencing RNAs or components in their pathways often leads to severe developmental defects, including lethality and sterility. Recently, non-templated addition of nucleotides to the 3' end, namely tailing, was found to associate with the processing and stability of small silencing RNAs.
A group of miRNAs can regulate a biological process by targeting genes involved in the process. The unbiased miRNA functional enrichment analysis is the most precise in silico approach to predict the biological processes that may be regulated by a given miRNA group. However, it is computationally intensive and significantly more expensive than its alternatives.
Recent advances in global genomic profiling methodologies have enabled multi-dimensional characterization of biological systems. Complete analysis of these genomic profiles require an in depth look at parallel profiles of segmental DNA copy number status, DNA methylation state, single nucleotide polymorphisms, as well as gene expression profiles. Due to the differences in data types it is difficult to conduct parallel analysis of multiple datasets from diverse platforms.
MiRNA are about 22nt long small noncoding RNAs that post transcriptionally regulate gene expression in animals, plants and protozoa. Confident identification of MiRNA-Target Interactions (MTI) is vital to understand their function. Currently, several integrated computational programs and databases are available for animal miRNAs, the mechanisms of which are significantly different from plant miRNAs.
An increasing number of small RNAs have been discovered in mammals. However, their primary transcripts and upstream regulatory networks remain largely to be determined. Genomic analysis of small RNAs facilitates identification of their primary transcripts, and hence contributes to researches of their upstream regulatory networks. We here report a batch platform, BatchGenAna, which is specifically designed for large-scale genomic analysis of mammalian small RNAs. It can map and annotate for as many as 1000 small RNAs or 10,000 genomic loci of small RNAs at a time.
The diverse functions of ncRNAs critically depend on their structures. Mutations in ncRNAs disrupting the structures of functional sites are expected to be deleterious. RNA deleterious mutations have attracted wide attentions because some of them in cells result in serious disease, and some others in microbes influence their fitness.
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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