InSyBio ncRNASeq: A web tool for analyzing non-coding RNAs

Abstract

Non-coding RNA (ncRNA) genes are RNA molecules transcribed from DNA, but not translated to proteins. Instead, they are involved in gene regulatory mechanisms and a variety of other cellular processes, and they have been associated with several diseases. Thus, their accurate and efficient identification as well as the identification of the genes they regulate is a promising research area and an open topic for the bioinformatics community. In the present paper, we present InSyBio ncRNASeq, which is a cloud-based web platform assisting users to analyze ncRNA sequences and predict whether they are miRNAs, pseudo-hairpins or if they belong to another ncRNA category. Additionally, InSyBio ncRNASeq offers a unique miRNA target prediction pipeline, which results in scored miRNA target sites in genes’ 3’UTRs. This tool not only presents the highest accuracy metrics compared with other state of the art methods and tools, but also offers batch searches between many or all known human miRNAs and many mRNAs.