Endogenous small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs), including microRNAs, PIWI-interacting RNAs and small interfering RNAs, play important gene regulatory roles in animals and plants by pairing to the protein-coding and non-coding transcripts. However, computationally assigning these various sRNAs to their regulatory target genes remains technically challenging.
Recently, a novel tool, StarScan (sRNA target Scan) was developed for discovering potential sRNA-mediated RNA cleavage events from degradome sequencing data in plants and animals (20 species). StarScan searches sRNA (miRNA, siRNA, piRNA, etc.) targets in annotated (lncRNAs, circRNAs, pseudogenes, 5' UTR, CDS, 3' UTR and introns) and unannotated genomic regions. StarScan web server performs an ultrafast and exhaustive search for potential sRNA–target interactions in various genomic regions.
Please visit http://mirlab.sysu.edu.cn/starscan/ or read StarScan paper (Nucleic Acids Res. 2015 May 18. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkv524) for details.
By integrating 100 degradome sequencing data from 20 species, StarScan will help researchers further investigate these data and discover novel regulatory modules and rules hidden in these data.
