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ProbeAlign: incorporating high-throughput sequencing-based structure probing information into ncRNA homology search.

ABSTRACT: Recent advances in RNA structure probing technologies, including the ones based on high-throughput sequencing, have improved the accuracy of thermodynamic folding with quantitative nucleotide-resolution structural information.In this paper, we present a novel approach, ProbeAlign, to incorporate the reactivities from high-throughput RNA structure probing into ncRNA homology search for functional annotation. To reduce the overhead of structure alignment on large-scale data, the specific pairing patterns in the query sequences are ignored. On the other hand, the partial structural information of the target sequences embedded in probing data is retrieved to guide the alignment. Thus the structure alignment problem is transformed into a sequence alignment problem with additional reactivity information. The benchmark results show that the prediction accuracy of ProbeAlign outperforms filter-based CMsearch with high computational efficiency. The application of ProbeAlign to the FragSeq data, which is based on genome-wide structure probing, has demonstrated its capability to search ncRNAs in a large-scale dataset from high-throughput sequencing.By incorporating high-throughput sequencing-based structure probing information, ProbeAlign can improve the accuracy and efficiency of ncRNA homology search. It is a promising tool for ncRNA functional annotation on genome-wide datasets.The source code of ProbeAlign is available at http://genome.ucf.edu/ProbeAlign.

SUBMITTER: Ge P

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4168714 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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ProbeAlign: incorporating high-throughput sequencing-based structure probing information into ncRNA homology search.

Ge Ping P Zhong Cuncong C Zhang Shaojie S

BMC bioinformatics 20140910

<h4>Background</h4>Recent advances in RNA structure probing technologies, including the ones based on high-throughput sequencing, have improved the accuracy of thermodynamic folding with quantitative nucleotide-resolution structural information.<h4>Results</h4>In this paper, we present a novel approach, ProbeAlign, to incorporate the reactivities from high-throughput RNA structure probing into ncRNA homology search for functional annotation. To reduce the overhead of structure alignment on large ...[more]

PMID: 25253206

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Project description:To accelerate previous RNA structure probing approaches, which focus on analyzing one RNA sequence at a time, we have developed FragSeq, a high-throughput RNA structure probing method that uses high-throughput RNA sequencing to identify single-stranded RNA (ssRNA) regions from fragments generated by nuclease P1, which is specific for single-stranded nucleic acids. In the accompanying study, we show that we can accurately and simultaneously map ssRNA regions in multiple non-coding RNAs with known structure in experiments probing the entire mouse nuclear transcriptome. We carried out probing in two cell types to assess reproducibility. We also identified and experimentally validated structured regions in ncRNAs never previously probed. We examined mouse nuclear RNA from two cell types: undifferentiated embryonic stem cells (UNDIFF) and cells differentiated into neural precursors (D5NP). For each cell type, nuclear RNA was purified and deproteinized, denatured, and refolded in vitro, from which we prepared three barcoded samples: "nuclease" (RNA partially digested with P1 ssRNA-specific nuclease, yielding 5'-PO4/3'-OH end chemistry at each cleavage site), "control" (control for "nuclease" sample to idenfity endogenous 5'-PO4/3'-OH), and "PNK" (same as "control" but followed by a polynucleotide kinase treatment to convert 5'-OH/3'-cyclic-phosphate ends to clonable 5'-PO4/3'-OH ends). Resulting RNA fragments were cloned using the SOLiD Small RNA Expression Kit (SREK) protocol, which ligates linkers only to 5'-PO4/3'-OH containing RNA, enriching for clones of products resulting from P1 cleavage in "nuclease" sample and selecting against random degradation. Two cell types, three treatments each, thus resulted in six barcoded samples total (barcodes 01, 02, 04, 05, 07, 08). Four other barcoded samples were prepared for separate experiments not used in our study (barcodes 03, 06, 09, 10), so their preparation is not described here. The total run of ten barcodes was done on the ABI SOLiD3 platform and a custom algorithm (FragSeq v0.0.1) was used to compute "cutting scores" (as described in our paper) that show ssRNA regions in hundreds of ncRNAs.

Project description:BackgroundThe search for distant homologs has become an import issue in genome annotation. A particular difficulty is posed by divergent homologs that have lost recognizable sequence similarity. This same problem also arises in the recognition of novel members of large classes of RNAs such as snoRNAs or microRNAs that consist of families unrelated by common descent. Current homology search tools for structured RNAs are either based entirely on sequence similarity (such as blast or hmmer) or combine sequence and secondary structure. The most prominent example of the latter class of tools is Infernal. Alternatives are descriptor-based methods. In most practical applications published to-date, however, the information contained in covariance models or manually prescribed search patterns is dominated by sequence information. Here we ask two related questions: (1) Is secondary structure alone informative for homology search and the detection of novel members of RNA classes? (2) To what extent is the thermodynamic propensity of the target sequence to fold into the correct secondary structure helpful for this task?ResultsSequence-structure alignment can be used as an alternative search strategy. In this scenario, the query consists of a base pairing probability matrix, which can be derived either from a single sequence or from a multiple alignment representing a set of known representatives. Sequence information can be optionally added to the query. The target sequence is pre-processed to obtain local base pairing probabilities. As a search engine we devised a semi-global scanning variant of LocARNA's algorithm for sequence-structure alignment. The LocARNAscan tool is optimized for speed and low memory consumption. In benchmarking experiments on artificial data we observe that the inclusion of thermodynamic stability is helpful, albeit only in a regime of extremely low sequence information in the query. We observe, furthermore, that the sensitivity is bounded in particular by the limited accuracy of the predicted local structures of the target sequence.ConclusionsAlthough we demonstrate that a purely structure-based homology search is feasible in principle, it is unlikely to outperform tools such as Infernal in most application scenarios, where a substantial amount of sequence information is typically available. The LocARNAscan approach will profit, however, from high throughput methods to determine RNA secondary structure. In transcriptome-wide applications, such methods will provide accurate structure annotations on the target side.AvailabilitySource code of the free software LocARNAscan 1.0 and supplementary data are available at http://www.bioinf.uni-leipzig.de/Software/LocARNAscan.

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ProbeAlign: incorporating high-throughput sequencing-based structure probing information into ncRNA homology search.

Publications

ProbeAlign: incorporating high-throughput sequencing-based structure probing information into ncRNA homology search.

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