The NonCode aReNA DB: a non-redundant and integrated collection of non- codingRNAs

The recent availability of high throughput tech- nologies, like next generation sequencing (NGS) platforms, has providedthescientific community with an unprecedented opportunity for large- scale analysis of genome in a large number of organisms.However,among others, one of the most challenging task for bioinformaticians is to developtools that providebiologists withaneasy access to curated and non-redundant collec- tions of sequence data. Non-coding RNAs, for a long time believed tobe not-functional, are emerging as themost large and important family of gene regulators. NonCode aReNA Database is a comprehensive and non-redundant source ofmanually curated and automatically annotated ncRNA transcripts. Originally developed as a component of a big- ger project, composed by a datawarehouse for the functional annotation of ncRNAs fromNGS data, NonCode aReNA DB is currently available as a web-resource at http://ncrnadb.ba.itb.cnr. it/. Sequences have been classified in diverse biotypes and associated to SequenceOntology terms. The database can be queried by using multi-criteria and ontological search, through an easy-to-use web interface, and data exported as non-redundant collections of transcripts an- notated in VEGA, ENSEMBL, RefSeq, miRBase, GtRNAdb and piRNABank. The database is up- dated through an automatic pipeline and last updatewasonJanuary 2015. PresentlyNonCode aReNA DB contains 134,908 human ncRNAs clas- sified in 24 biotypes, and next update will include transcripts ofMusmusculus and Arabidopsis thal- iana. Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Italian MIUR Flagship Project "Epigen".