RNAthor - fast, accurate normalization, visualization and statistical analysis of RNA probing data resolved by capillary electrophoresis

PLoS One. 2020 Oct 1;15(10):e0239287. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0239287. eCollection 2020.

Abstract

RNAs adopt specific structures to perform their functions, which are critical to fundamental cellular processes. For decades, these structures have been determined and modeled with strong support from computational methods. Still, the accuracy of the latter ones depends on the availability of experimental data, for example, chemical probing information that can define pseudo-energy constraints for RNA folding algorithms. At the same time, diverse computational tools have been developed to facilitate analysis and visualization of data from RNA structure probing experiments followed by capillary electrophoresis or next-generation sequencing. RNAthor, a new software tool for the fully automated normalization of SHAPE and DMS probing data resolved by capillary electrophoresis, has recently joined this collection. RNAthor automatically identifies unreliable probing data. It normalizes the reactivity information to a uniform scale and uses it in the RNA secondary structure prediction. Our web server also provides tools for fast and easy RNA probing data visualization and statistical analysis that facilitates the comparison of multiple data sets. RNAthor is freely available at http://rnathor.cs.put.poznan.pl/.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • Electrophoresis, Capillary*
  • Internet
  • RNA / chemistry*
  • RNA Folding*
  • Statistics as Topic / methods*
  • Time Factors

Substances

  • RNA

Grants and funding

This work was funded by the National Science Centre Poland (https://ncn.gov.pl/?language=en) in the form of grants awarded to MS (2016/23/B/ST6/03931, 2019/35/B/ST6/03074) and KPW (2016/22/E/NZ3/00426). Funding for the open access charge was provided by the statutory funds of Poznan University of Technology. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.