StemSearch: RNA search tool based on stem identification and indexing

摘要

The discovery and functional analysis of noncoding RNA (ncRNA) systems in different organisms motivates the development of tools for aiding ncRNA research. Several tools exist that search for occurrences of a given RNA structural profile in genomic sequences. Yet, there is a need for an "RNA BLAST" tool, i.e., a tool that takes a putative functional RNA sequence as input, and efficiently searches for similar sequences in genomic databases, taking into consideration potential secondary structure features of the input query sequence. This work aims at providing such a tool.