MOTIVATION: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small RNA molecules (∼22 nucleotide long) involved in post-transcriptional gene regulation. Advances in high-throughput sequencing technologies led to the discovery of isomiRs, which are miRNA sequence variants. While many miRNA-seq analysis tools exist, the diversity of output formats hinders accurate comparisons between tools and precludes data sharing and the development of common downstream analysis methods. RESULTS: To overcome this situation, we present here a community-based project, miRNA Transcriptomic Open Project (miRTOP) working towards the optimization of miRNA analyses. The aim of miRTOP is to promote the development of downstream isomiR analysis tools that are compatible with existing detection and quantification tools. Based on the existing GFF3 format, we first created a new standard format, mirGFF3, for the output of miRNA/isomiR detection and quantification results from small RNA-seq data. Additionally, we developed a command line Python tool, mirtop, to create and manage the mirGFF3 format. Currently, mirtop can convert into mirGFF3 the outputs of commonly used pipelines, such as seqbuster, isomiR-SEA, sRNAbench, Prost! as well as BAM files. Some tools have also incorporated the mirGFF3 format directly into their code, such as, miRge2.0, IsoMIRmap and OptimiR. Its open architecture enables any tool or pipeline to output or convert results into mirGFF3. Collectively, this isomiR categorization system, along with the accompanying mirGFF3 and mirtop API, provide a comprehensive solution for the standardization of miRNA and isomiR annotation, enabling data sharing, reporting, comparative analyses and benchmarking, while promoting the development of common miRNA methods focusing on downstream steps of miRNA detection, annotation and quantification. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: https://github.com/miRTop/mirGFF3/ and https://github.com/miRTop/mirtop. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

MOTIVATION: Most computational tools for small non-coding RNAs (sRNA) sequencing data analysis focus in microRNAs (miRNAs), overlooking other types of sRNAs that show multi-mapping hits. Here, we have developed a pipeline to non-redundantly quantify all types of sRNAs, and extract patterns of expression in biologically defined groups. We have used our tool to characterize and profile sRNAs in post-mortem brain samples of control individuals and Parkinson's disease (PD) cases at early-premotor and late-symptomatic stages. RESULTS: Clusters of co-expressed sRNAs mapping onto tRNAs significantly separated premotor and motor cases from controls. A similar result was obtained using a matrix of miRNAs slightly varying in sequence (isomiRs). The present framework revealed sRNA alterations at premotor stages of PD, which might reflect initial pathogenic perturbations. This tool may be useful to discover sRNA expression patterns linked to different biological conditions. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: The full code is available at http://github.com/lpantano/seqbuster CONTACT: [email protected] or [email protected] SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Abstract Motivation: Recent progress in high-throughput sequencing technologies has largely contributed to reveal a highly complex landscape of small non-coding RNAs (sRNAs), including novel non-canonical sRNAs derived from long non-coding RNA, repeated elements, transcription start sites and splicing site regions among others. The published frameworks for sRNA data analysis are focused on miRNA detection and prediction, ignoring further information in the dataset. As a consequence, tools for the identification and classification of the sRNAs not belonging to miRNA family are currently lacking. Results: Here, we present, SeqCluster, an extension of the currently available SeqBuster tool to identify and analyze at different levels the sRNAs not annotated or predicted as miRNAs. This new module deals with sequences mapping onto multiple locations and permits a highly versatile and user-friendly interaction with the data in order to easily classify sRNA sequences with a putative functional importance. We were able to detect all known classes of sRNAs described to date using SeqCluster with different sRNA datasets. Availability: tool and video-tutorials are available at http://estivill_lab.crg.es/seqbuster. Contact: [email protected]; [email protected] Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.