scholarly journals Butter: High-precision genomic alignment of small RNA-seq data

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J Axtell

Eukaryotes produce large numbers of small non-coding RNAs that act as specificity determinants for various gene-regulatory complexes. These include microRNAs (miRNAs), endogenous short interfering RNAs (siRNAs), and Piwi-associated RNAs (piRNAs). These RNAs can be discovered, annotated, and quantified using small RNA-seq, a variant RNA-seq method based on highly parallel sequencing. Alignment to a reference genome is a critical step in analysis of small RNA-seq data. Because of their small size (20-30 nts depending on the organism and sub-type) and tendency to originate from multi-gene families or repetitive regions, reads that align equally well to more than one genomic location are very common. Typical methods to deal with multi-mapped small RNA-seq reads sacrifice either precision or sensitivity. The tool 'butter' balances precision and sensitivity by placing multi-mapped reads using an iterative approach, where the decision between possible locations is dictated by the local densities of more confidently aligned reads. Butter displays superior performance relative to other small RNA-seq aligners. Treatment of multi-mapped small RNA-seq reads has substantial impacts on downstream analyses, including quantification of MIRNA paralogs, and discovery of endogenous siRNA loci. Butter is freely available under a GNU general public license.

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
pp. 16-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Srinivas V Koduru ◽  
Amit K Tiwari ◽  
Sprague W Hazard ◽  
Milind Mahajan ◽  
Dino J Ravnic

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian J. Haas ◽  
Alex Dobin ◽  
Nicolas Stransky ◽  
Bo Li ◽  
Xiao Yang ◽  
...  

AbstractMotivationFusion genes created by genomic rearrangements can be potent drivers of tumorigenesis. However, accurate identification of functionally fusion genes from genomic sequencing requires whole genome sequencing, since exonic sequencing alone is often insufficient. Transcriptome sequencing provides a direct, highly effective alternative for capturing molecular evidence of expressed fusions in the precision medicine pipeline, but current methods tend to be inefficient or insufficiently accurate, lacking in sensitivity or predicting large numbers of false positives. Here, we describe STAR-Fusion, a method that is both fast and accurate in identifying fusion transcripts from RNA-Seq data.ResultsWe benchmarked STAR-Fusion’s fusion detection accuracy using both simulated and genuine Illumina paired-end RNA-Seq data, and show that it has superior performance compared to popular alternative fusion detection methods.Availability and implementationSTAR-Fusion is implemented in Perl, freely available as open source software at http://star-fusion.github.io, and supported on [email protected]


Author(s):  
Stephan S Persengiev

Small non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) represent a diverse group of gene regulatory factors that can posttranscriptionally regulate gene expression in response to various stimuli during brain development and differentiation. Subsets of ncRNAs and miRNAs in particular, are very specifically expressed within the central nervous system and participate in the regulation of important brain functions. miRNAs are essential for the postmitotic survival of neurons, and therefore might play a role in neuroprotection. A number of miRNAs have been reported to be dysregulated in several neurodegenerative diseases implying that they can contribute to pathogenesis. Furthermore, in light of the neuroprotective properties of some miRNAs, these small RNA species may themselves be the focus for drug development. Here, we review recent studies that imply a link between miRNA role in the regulation of ubiquitine-proteasome pathways and neurodegeneration and discuss how increased knowledge of miRNAs might serve the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephan S Persengiev

Small non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) represent a diverse group of gene regulatory factors that can posttranscriptionally regulate gene expression in response to various stimuli during brain development and differentiation. Subsets of ncRNAs and miRNAs in particular, are very specifically expressed within the central nervous system and participate in the regulation of important brain functions. miRNAs are essential for the postmitotic survival of neurons, and therefore might play a role in neuroprotection. A number of miRNAs have been reported to be dysregulated in several neurodegenerative diseases implying that they can contribute to pathogenesis. Furthermore, in light of the neuroprotective properties of some miRNAs, these small RNA species may themselves be the focus for drug development. Here, we review recent studies that imply a link between miRNA role in the regulation of ubiquitine-proteasome pathways and neurodegeneration and discuss how increased knowledge of miRNAs might serve the diagnosis and treatment of neurodegenerative diseases.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatemeh Sadoughi ◽  
Seyyed Mehdi Mirhashemi ◽  
Zatollah Asemi

AbstractSmall non‐coding RNAs (sncRNAs) are a subgroup of non‐coding RNAs, with less than 200 nucleotides length and no potential for coding proteins. PiRNAs, a member of sncRNAs, were first discovered more than a decade ago and have attracted researcher’s attention because of their gene regulatory function both in the nucleus and in the cytoplasm. Recent investigations have found that the abnormal expression of these sncRNAs is involved in many human diseases, including cancers. Colorectal cancer (CRC), as a common gastrointestinal malignancy, is one of the important causes of cancer‐related deaths through the entire world and appears to be a consequence of mutation in the genome and epigenetic alterations. The aim of this review is to realize whether there is a relationship between CRC and piRNAs or not.


Plants ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 1465
Author(s):  
Ramon de Koning ◽  
Raphaël Kiekens ◽  
Mary Esther Muyoka Toili ◽  
Geert Angenon

Raffinose family oligosaccharides (RFO) play an important role in plants but are also considered to be antinutritional factors. A profound understanding of the galactinol and RFO biosynthetic gene families and the expression patterns of the individual genes is a prerequisite for the sustainable reduction of the RFO content in the seeds, without compromising normal plant development and functioning. In this paper, an overview of the annotation and genetic structure of all galactinol- and RFO biosynthesis genes is given for soybean and common bean. In common bean, three galactinol synthase genes, two raffinose synthase genes and one stachyose synthase gene were identified for the first time. To discover the expression patterns of these genes in different tissues, two expression atlases have been created through re-analysis of publicly available RNA-seq data. De novo expression analysis through an RNA-seq study during seed development of three varieties of common bean gave more insight into the expression patterns of these genes during the seed development. The results of the expression analysis suggest that different classes of galactinol- and RFO synthase genes have tissue-specific expression patterns in soybean and common bean. With the obtained knowledge, important galactinol- and RFO synthase genes that specifically play a key role in the accumulation of RFOs in the seeds are identified. These candidate genes may play a pivotal role in reducing the RFO content in the seeds of important legumes which could improve the nutritional quality of these beans and would solve the discomforts associated with their consumption.


Animals ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 1268
Author(s):  
Shengchao Zhang ◽  
Sibtain Ahmad ◽  
Yuxia Zhang ◽  
Guohua Hua ◽  
Jianming Yi

Enhanced plane of nutrition at pre-weaning stage can promote the development of mammary gland especially heifer calves. Although several genes are involved in this process, long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) are regarded as key regulators in the regulated network and are still largely unknown. We identified and characterized 534 putative lincRNAs based on the published RNA-seq data, including heifer calves in two groups: fed enhanced milk replacer (EH, 1.13 kg/day, including 28% crude protein, 25% fat) group and fed restricted milk replacer (R, 0.45 kg/day, including 20% crude protein, 20% fat) group. Sub-samples from the mammary parenchyma (PAR) and mammary fat pad (MFP) were harvested from heifer calves. According to the information of these lincRNAs’ quantitative trait loci (QTLs), the neighboring and co-expression genes were used to predict their function. By comparing EH vs R, 79 lincRNAs (61 upregulated, 18 downregulated) and 86 lincRNAs (54 upregulated, 32 downregulated) were differentially expressed in MFP and PAR, respectively. In MFP, some differentially expressed lincRNAs (DELs) are involved in lipid metabolism pathways, while, in PAR, among of DELs are involved in cell proliferation pathways. Taken together, this study explored the potential regulatory mechanism of lincRNAs in the mammary gland development of calves under different planes of nutrition.


Horticulturae ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 149
Author(s):  
Chao Gong ◽  
Qiangqiang Pang ◽  
Zhiliang Li ◽  
Zhenxing Li ◽  
Riyuan Chen ◽  
...  

Under high temperature stress, a large number of proteins in plant cells will be denatured and inactivated. Meanwhile Hsfs and Hsps will be quickly induced to remove denatured proteins, so as to avoid programmed cell death, thus enhancing the thermotolerance of plants. Here, a comprehensive identification and analysis of the Hsf and Hsp gene families in eggplant under heat stress was performed. A total of 24 Hsf-like genes and 117 Hsp-like genes were identified from the eggplant genome using the interolog from Arabidopsis. The gene structure and motif composition of Hsf and Hsp genes were relatively conserved in each subfamily in eggplant. RNA-seq data and qRT-PCR analysis showed that the expressions of most eggplant Hsf and Hsp genes were increased upon exposure to heat stress, especially in thermotolerant line. The comprehensive analysis indicated that different sets of SmHsps genes were involved downstream of particular SmHsfs genes. These results provided a basis for revealing the roles of SmHsps and SmHsp for thermotolerance in eggplant, which may potentially be useful for understanding the thermotolerance mechanism involving SmHsps and SmHsp in eggplant.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (14) ◽  
pp. 7514
Author(s):  
David S. Moura ◽  
Juan Díaz-Martín ◽  
Silvia Bagué ◽  
Ruth Orellana-Fernandez ◽  
Ana Sebio ◽  
...  

Solitary fibrous tumor is a rare subtype of soft-tissue sarcoma with a wide spectrum of histopathological features and clinical behaviors, ranging from mildly to highly aggressive tumors. The defining genetic driver alteration is the gene fusion NAB2–STAT6, resulting from a paracentric inversion within chromosome 12q, and involving several different exons in each gene. STAT6 (signal transducer and activator of transcription 6) nuclear immunostaining and/or the identification of NAB2–STAT6 gene fusion is required for the diagnostic confirmation of solitary fibrous tumor. In the present study, a new gene fusion consisting of Nuclear Factor I X (NFIX), mapping to 19p13.2 and STAT6, mapping to 12q13.3 was identified by targeted RNA-Seq in a 74-year-old female patient diagnosed with a deep-seated solitary fibrous tumor in the pelvis. Histopathologically, the neoplasm did not display nuclear pleomorphism or tumor necrosis and had a low proliferative index. A total of 378 unique reads spanning the NFIXexon8–STAT6exon2 breakpoint with 55 different start sites were detected in the bioinformatic analysis, which represented 59.5% of the reads intersecting the genomic location on either side of the breakpoint. Targeted RNA-Seq results were validated by RT-PCR/ Sanger sequencing. The identification of a new gene fusion partner for STAT6 in solitary fibrous tumor opens intriguing new hypotheses to refine the role of STAT6 in the sarcomatogenesis of this entity.


Diagnostics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 964
Author(s):  
Sarka Benesova ◽  
Mikael Kubista ◽  
Lukas Valihrach

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of small RNA molecules that have an important regulatory role in multiple physiological and pathological processes. Their disease-specific profiles and presence in biofluids are properties that enable miRNAs to be employed as non-invasive biomarkers. In the past decades, several methods have been developed for miRNA analysis, including small RNA sequencing (RNA-seq). Small RNA-seq enables genome-wide profiling and analysis of known, as well as novel, miRNA variants. Moreover, its high sensitivity allows for profiling of low input samples such as liquid biopsies, which have now found applications in diagnostics and prognostics. Still, due to technical bias and the limited ability to capture the true miRNA representation, its potential remains unfulfilled. The introduction of many new small RNA-seq approaches that tried to minimize this bias, has led to the existence of the many small RNA-seq protocols seen today. Here, we review all current approaches to cDNA library construction used during the small RNA-seq workflow, with particular focus on their implementation in commercially available protocols. We provide an overview of each protocol and discuss their applicability. We also review recent benchmarking studies comparing each protocol’s performance and summarize the major conclusions that can be gathered from their usage. The result documents variable performance of the protocols and highlights their different applications in miRNA research. Taken together, our review provides a comprehensive overview of all the current small RNA-seq approaches, summarizes their strengths and weaknesses, and provides guidelines for their applications in miRNA research.


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