Bioinformatic analysis of small RNA sequencing libraries consists of transforming a series of small RNA sequencing experiment fastq files into a table containing small RNA sequences and their abundance. This is achieved by cleaning the reads, aligning the cleaned reads to a reference, and parsing the alignment results. In this protocol we present the most common option, and the rationale, for each of these steps.
Keywords: Adapter; Bioinformatics; Bowtie; Sequences; ShortStack; Small RNA; miRNA.