Small RNA

Small non-coding RNAs are typically only 18-40 nucleotides in length, but they have a profound effect on manly cellular processes.  Recently discovered families of small non-coding RNA have allowed new insights for understanding gene regulation at the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level.

Small RNA has been shown to play critical roles in developmental timing, cell fate, tumor progression and neurogenesis. Animals, plants, and fungi contain several distinct classes of small RNA, including: microRNA (miRNA), short interfering RNA (siRNA), piwi-interacting RNA (piRNA), siRNA RNA (rasiRNA)

Using next generation sequencing a sample’s entire set of small RNAs can be quantified and measured allowing for the discovery of novel RNAs and identification of highly expressed small RNAs.  This approach is more sensitive than a microarray approach as it doesn’t have the probe bias intrinsic in microarray approaches.

The small RNA analysis tools from Edge Bio are designed to facilitate trimming of sequencing reads, counting and annotating of the resulting tags using miRBase or other annotation sources and performing expression analysis of the results. The methods and tools developed are inspired by the findings and methods described in [Creighton et al., 2009], [Wyman et al., 2009], [Morin et al., 2008] and [Stark et al., 2010].