Pieter‐Jan Volders

While long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) research in the past has primarily focused on the discovery of novel genes, today it has shifted towards functional annotation of this large class of genes. With thousands of lncRNA studies published every year, the current challenge lies in keeping track of which lncRNAs are functionally described. This is further complicated by the fact that lncRNA nomenclature is not straightforward and lncRNA annotation is scattered across different resources with their own quality metrics and definition of a lncRNA. To overcome this issue, large scale curation and annotation is needed. Here, we present the fifth release of the human lncRNA database LNCipedia (https://lncipedia.org). The most notable improvements include manual literature curation of 2482 lncRNA articles and the use of official gene symbols when available. In addition, an improved filtering pipeline results in a higher quality reference lncRNA gene set.

Here, we present LNCipedia (http://www.lncipedia.org), a novel database for human long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) transcripts and genes. LncRNAs constitute a large and diverse class of non-coding RNA genes. Although several lncRNAs have been functionally annotated, the majority remains to be characterized. Different high-throughput methods to identify new lncRNAs (including RNA sequencing and annotation of chromatin-state maps) have been applied in various studies resulting in multiple unrelated lncRNA data sets. LNCipedia offers 21 488 annotated human lncRNA transcripts obtained from different sources. In addition to basic transcript information and gene structure, several statistics are determined for each entry in the database, such as secondary structure information, protein coding potential and microRNA binding sites. Our analyses suggest that, much like microRNAs, many lncRNAs have a significant secondary structure, in-line with their presumed association with proteins or protein complexes. Available literature on specific lncRNAs is linked, and users or authors can submit articles through a web interface. Protein coding potential is assessed by two different prediction algorithms: Coding Potential Calculator and HMMER. In addition, a novel strategy has been integrated for detecting potentially coding lncRNAs by automatically re-analysing the large body of publicly available mass spectrometry data in the PRIDE database. LNCipedia is publicly available and allows users to query and download lncRNA sequences and structures based on different search criteria. The database may serve as a resource to initiate small- and large-scale lncRNA studies. As an example, the LNCipedia content was used to develop a custom microarray for expression profiling of all available lncRNAs.

RNAcentral is a comprehensive database of non-coding RNA (ncRNA) sequences that provides a single access point to 44 RNA resources and >18 million ncRNA sequences from a wide range of organisms and RNA types. RNAcentral now also includes secondary (2D) structure information for >13 million sequences, making RNAcentral the world's largest RNA 2D structure database. The 2D diagrams are displayed using R2DT, a new 2D structure visualization method that uses consistent, reproducible and recognizable layouts for related RNAs. The sequence similarity search has been updated with a faster interface featuring facets for filtering search results by RNA type, organism, source database or any keyword. This sequence search tool is available as a reusable web component, and has been integrated into several RNAcentral member databases, including Rfam, miRBase and snoDB. To allow for a more fine-grained assignment of RNA types and subtypes, all RNAcentral sequences have been annotated with Sequence Ontology terms. The RNAcentral database continues to grow and provide a central data resource for the RNA community. RNAcentral is freely available at https://rnacentral.org.

The human genome is pervasively transcribed, producing thousands of non-coding RNA transcripts. The majority of these transcripts are long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and novel lncRNA genes are being identified at rapid pace. To streamline these efforts, we created LNCipedia, an online repository of lncRNA transcripts and annotation. Here, we present LNCipedia 3.0 (http://www.lncipedia.org), the latest version of the publicly available human lncRNA database. Compared to the previous version of LNCipedia, the database grew over five times in size, gaining over 90,000 new lncRNA transcripts. Assessment of the protein-coding potential of LNCipedia entries is improved with state-of-the art methods that include large-scale reprocessing of publicly available proteomics data. As a result, a high-confidence set of lncRNA transcripts with low coding potential is defined and made available for download. In addition, a tool to assess lncRNA gene conservation between human, mouse and zebrafish has been implemented.

RNAcentral is a database of non-coding RNA (ncRNA) sequences that aggregates data from specialised ncRNA resources and provides a single entry point for accessing ncRNA sequences of all ncRNA types from all organisms. Since its launch in 2014, RNAcentral has integrated twelve new resources, taking the total number of collaborating database to 22, and began importing new types of data, such as modified nucleotides from MODOMICS and PDB. We created new species-specific identifiers that refer to unique RNA sequences within a context of single species. The website has been subject to continuous improvements focusing on text and sequence similarity searches as well as genome browsing functionality. All RNAcentral data is provided for free and is available for browsing, bulk downloads, and programmatic access at http://rnacentral.org/.