Title
RNA Sampler: a new sampling based algorithm for common RNA secondary structure prediction and structural alignment.
Abstract
Motivation: Non-coding RNA genes and RNA structural regulatory motifs play important roles in gene regulation and other cellular functions. They are often characterized by specific secondary structures that are critical to their functions and are often conserved in phylogenetically or functionally related sequences. Predicting common RNA secondary structures in multiple unaligned sequences remains a challenge in bioinformatics research. Methods and Results: We present a new sampling based algorithm to predict common RNA secondary structures in multiple unaligned sequences. Our algorithm finds the common structure between two sequences by probabilistically sampling aligned stems based on stem conservation calculated from intrasequence base pairing probabilities and intersequence base alignment probabilities. It iteratively updates these probabilities based on sampled structures and subsequently recalculates stem conservation using the updated probabilities. The iterative process terminates upon convergence of the sampled structures. We extend the algorithm to multiple sequences by a consistency-based method, which iteratively incorporates and reinforces consistent structure information from pairwise comparisons into consensus structures. The algorithm has no limitation on predicting pseudoknots. In extensive testing on real sequence data, our algorithm outperformed other leading RNA structure prediction methods in both sensitivity and specificity with a reasonably fast speed. It also generated better structural alignments than other programs in sequences of a wide range of identities, which more accurately represent the RNA secondary structure conservations.
Year
DOI
Venue
2007
10.1093/bioinformatics/btm272
BIOINFORMATICS
Keywords
Field
DocType
rna secondary structure,base pair,non coding rna,gene regulation,genetics,structure alignment,secondary structure,rna structure
Convergence (routing),RNA,Data mining,Pairwise comparison,Structural alignment,Iterative and incremental development,Computer science,Bioinformatics,Base pair,Nucleic acid secondary structure,Sequence analysis
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
23
15
1367-4803
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
28
1.08
22
Authors
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Xing Xu1867.35
Yongmei Ji2814.41
G D Stormo31931283.26