Volume 62, Issue 1 e51
UNIT

Non-Coding RNA Analysis Using the Rfam Database

Ioanna Kalvari

Ioanna Kalvari

European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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Eric P. Nawrocki

Eric P. Nawrocki

National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, Bethesda, Maryland

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Joanna Argasinska

Joanna Argasinska

European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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Natalia Quinones-Olvera

Natalia Quinones-Olvera

Systems Biology Graduate Program, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

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Robert D. Finn

Robert D. Finn

European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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Alex Bateman

Alex Bateman

European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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Anton I. Petrov

Anton I. Petrov

European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute, Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge, United Kingdom

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First published: 05 June 2018
Citations: 314

Abstract

Rfam is a database of non-coding RNA families in which each family is represented by a multiple sequence alignment, a consensus secondary structure, and a covariance model. Using a combination of manual and literature-based curation and a custom software pipeline, Rfam converts descriptions of RNA families found in the scientific literature into computational models that can be used to annotate RNAs belonging to those families in any DNA or RNA sequence. Valuable research outputs that are often locked up in figures and supplementary information files are encapsulated in Rfam entries and made accessible through the Rfam Web site. The data produced by Rfam have a broad application, from genome annotation to providing training sets for algorithm development. This article gives an overview of how to search and navigate the Rfam Web site, and how to annotate sequences with RNA families. The Rfam database is freely available at http://rfam.org. © 2018 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.