Research Project - RNA SSTRAND

RNA SSTRAND is a new database for RNA secondary structure data and statistical analysis of RNA structural motifs.

It was put together by Mirela Andronescu, Vera Bereg, Holger H. Hoos and Anne Condon from the Department of Computer Science University of British Columbia Vancover, B.C., Canada.

An article about the first version will be published around January, in the special database issue, the Nucleic Acids Research journal.

Here is the abstract of the paper:

Known RNA secondary structures are very important for a better understanding of RNA folding, for evaluating computational predictions and for deriving better energy models. Several databases of RNA secondary and tertiary structures exist, however they are dedicated to specific types of RNA (such as ribosomal RNA or transfer RNA), or they contain only tertiary structures. In this paper we describe RNA SSTRAND - the RNA Secondary STRucture and statistical Analysis Database, a new database containing known secondary structures of any type and organism. New elements are: The RNA Secondary Structure Analyser, a tool to analyse RNA secondary structures, which we use to give a comprehensive statistical analysis of the molecules in the database. This analysis is valuable for understanding to which extent and with which probability certain features can appear. A wide collection of known RNA secondary structures drawn from the published literature or from public databases. In addition to single stranded RNA folded to itself, RNA SSTRAND includes interacting RNA molecules. In order to keep up-to-date with new RNA secondary structure experiments, we offer the necessary tools to add solved RNA secondary structures to our database and invite researchers to contribute to RNA SSTRAND. We also describe some initial findings from the statistical analyses supported by RNA SSTRAND.

If you are intrigued enough by this brief description, please, do not hesitate to check out the RNA SSTRAND at its virtual home. It might also be a good idea check out the full article once it is published.

Since I was one of the implementors behind this grand project, I dare say that this database might prove to be a very useful tool for the researchers in the bioinformatics field. It doesn't just combine the RNA knowledge across many databases, it is also capable of predicting the future, not like a fortune teller, of course, but more like a compas to guide the researchers in the new directions by revealling the hidden treasures of data mining.

I have prepared a slide demonstation on the topic of RNA SSTRAND, feel free to check it out:

• Presentation

• Compressed version of the presenation