Open AccesspiRNABank: a web resource on classified and clustered Piwi-interacting RNAs
Author(s) -
Swathi Lakshmi,
Shipra Agrawal
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
nucleic acids research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 9.008
H-Index - 537
eISSN - 1362-4954
pISSN - 0305-1048
DOI - 10.1093/nar/gkm696
Subject(s) - piwi interacting rna , biology , argonaute , rasirna , germline , genetics , retrotransposon , gene , epigenetics , genome , rna , computational biology , homology (biology) , small rna , rna interference , transposable element
Piwi-interacting RNAs (piRNAs) are expressed in mammalian germline cells and have been identified as key players in germline development. These molecules, typically of length 25-33 nt, associate with Piwi proteins of the Argonaute family to form the Piwi-interacting RNA complex. These small regulatory RNAs have been implicated in spermatogenesis, repression of retrotransposon transposition in germline cells, epigenetic regulation and positive regulation of translation and mRNA stability. piRNABank is a highly user-friendly resource which stores empirically known sequences and other related information on piRNAs reported in human, mouse and rat. The database supports organism and chromosome-wise comprehensive search features including accession numbers, localization on chromosomes, gene name or symbol, sequence homology-based search, clusters and corresponding genes and repeat elements. It also displays each piRNA or piRNA cluster on a graphical genome-wide map (http://pirnabank.ibab.ac.in/).