A method for aligning RNA secondary structures and its application to RNA motif detection

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Alignment of RNA secondary structures is important in studying functional RNA motifs. In recent years, much progress has been made in RNA motif finding and structure alignment. However, existing tools either require a large number of...

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Main Authors: Hu Jun, Wang Jason TL, Liu Jianghui, Tian Bin
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: BMC 2005-04-01
Series:BMC Bioinformatics
Online Access:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/6/89
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author Hu Jun
Wang Jason TL
Liu Jianghui
Tian Bin
author_facet Hu Jun
Wang Jason TL
Liu Jianghui
Tian Bin
author_sort Hu Jun
collection DOAJ
description <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Alignment of RNA secondary structures is important in studying functional RNA motifs. In recent years, much progress has been made in RNA motif finding and structure alignment. However, existing tools either require a large number of prealigned structures or suffer from high time complexities. This makes it difficult for the tools to process RNAs whose prealigned structures are unavailable or process very large RNA structure databases.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We present here an efficient tool called RSmatch for aligning RNA secondary structures and for motif detection. Motivated by widely used algorithms for RNA folding, we decompose an RNA secondary structure into a set of atomic structure components that are further organized by a tree model to capture the structural particularities. RSmatch can find the optimal global or local alignment between two RNA secondary structures using two scoring matrices, one for single-stranded regions and the other for double-stranded regions. The time complexity of RSmatch is <it>O(mn) </it>where <it>m </it>is the size of the query structure and <it>n </it>that of the subject structure. When applied to searching a structure database, RSmatch can find similar RNA substructures, and is capable of conducting multiple structure alignment and iterative database search. Therefore it can be used to identify functional RNA motifs. The accuracy of RSmatch is tested by experiments using a number of known RNA structures, including simple stem-loops and complex structures containing junctions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>With respect to computing efficiency and accuracy, RSmatch compares favorably with other tools for RNA structure alignment and motif detection. This tool shall be useful to researchers interested in comparing RNA structures obtained from wet lab experiments or RNA folding programs, particularly when the size of the structure dataset is large.</p>
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spelling doaj.art-a1c239a903a74af5a4e17e1d5c1db2cd2022-12-22T01:12:48ZengBMCBMC Bioinformatics1471-21052005-04-01618910.1186/1471-2105-6-89A method for aligning RNA secondary structures and its application to RNA motif detectionHu JunWang Jason TLLiu JianghuiTian Bin<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Alignment of RNA secondary structures is important in studying functional RNA motifs. In recent years, much progress has been made in RNA motif finding and structure alignment. However, existing tools either require a large number of prealigned structures or suffer from high time complexities. This makes it difficult for the tools to process RNAs whose prealigned structures are unavailable or process very large RNA structure databases.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We present here an efficient tool called RSmatch for aligning RNA secondary structures and for motif detection. Motivated by widely used algorithms for RNA folding, we decompose an RNA secondary structure into a set of atomic structure components that are further organized by a tree model to capture the structural particularities. RSmatch can find the optimal global or local alignment between two RNA secondary structures using two scoring matrices, one for single-stranded regions and the other for double-stranded regions. The time complexity of RSmatch is <it>O(mn) </it>where <it>m </it>is the size of the query structure and <it>n </it>that of the subject structure. When applied to searching a structure database, RSmatch can find similar RNA substructures, and is capable of conducting multiple structure alignment and iterative database search. Therefore it can be used to identify functional RNA motifs. The accuracy of RSmatch is tested by experiments using a number of known RNA structures, including simple stem-loops and complex structures containing junctions.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>With respect to computing efficiency and accuracy, RSmatch compares favorably with other tools for RNA structure alignment and motif detection. This tool shall be useful to researchers interested in comparing RNA structures obtained from wet lab experiments or RNA folding programs, particularly when the size of the structure dataset is large.</p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/6/89
spellingShingle Hu Jun
Wang Jason TL
Liu Jianghui
Tian Bin
A method for aligning RNA secondary structures and its application to RNA motif detection
BMC Bioinformatics
title A method for aligning RNA secondary structures and its application to RNA motif detection
title_full A method for aligning RNA secondary structures and its application to RNA motif detection
title_fullStr A method for aligning RNA secondary structures and its application to RNA motif detection
title_full_unstemmed A method for aligning RNA secondary structures and its application to RNA motif detection
title_short A method for aligning RNA secondary structures and its application to RNA motif detection
title_sort method for aligning rna secondary structures and its application to rna motif detection
url http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2105/6/89
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