SARA: a server for function annotation of RNA structures

Nucleic Acids Res. 2009 Jul;37(Web Server issue):W260-5. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkp433. Epub 2009 May 29.

Abstract

Recent interest in non-coding RNA transcripts has resulted in a rapid increase of deposited RNA structures in the Protein Data Bank. However, a characterization and functional classification of the RNA structure and function space have only been partially addressed. Here, we introduce the SARA program for pair-wise alignment of RNA structures as a web server for structure-based RNA function assignment. The SARA server relies on the SARA program, which aligns two RNA structures based on a unit-vector root-mean-square approach. The likely accuracy of the SARA alignments is assessed by three different P-values estimating the statistical significance of the sequence, secondary structure and tertiary structure identity scores, respectively. Our benchmarks, which relied on a set of 419 RNA structures with known SCOR structural class, indicate that at a negative logarithm of mean P-value higher or equal than 2.5, SARA can assign the correct or a similar SCOR class to 81.4% and 95.3% of the benchmark set, respectively. The SARA server is freely accessible via the World Wide Web at http://sgu.bioinfo.cipf.es/services/SARA/.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms
  • Nucleic Acid Conformation
  • RNA / chemistry*
  • Sequence Alignment / methods
  • Software*

Substances

  • RNA