title: Genome-wide searching with base-pairing kernel functions for noncoding RNAs: computational and expression analysis of snoRNA families in Caenorhabditis elegans.
abstract: Despite the accumulating research on noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs), it is likely that we are seeing only the tip of the iceberg regarding our understanding of the functions and the regulatory roles served by ncRNAs in cellular metabolism, pathogenesis and host-pathogen interactions. Therefore, more powerful computational and experimental tools for analyzing ncRNAs need to be developed. To this end, we propose novel kernel functions, called base-pairing profile local alignment (BPLA) kernels, for analyzing functional ncRNA sequences using support vector machines (SVMs). We extend the local alignment kernels for amino acid sequences in order to handle RNA sequences by using STRAL's; scoring function, which takes into account sequence similarities as well as upstream and downstream base-pairing probabilities, thus enabling us to model secondary structures of RNA sequences. As a test of the performance of BPLA kernels, we applied our kernels to the problem of discriminating members of an RNA family from nonmembers using SVMs. The results indicated that the discrimination ability of our kernels is stronger than that of other existing methods. Furthermore, we demonstrated the applicability of our kernels to the problem of genome-wide search of snoRNA families in the Caenorhabditis elegans genome, and confirmed that the expression is valid in 14 out of 48 of our predicted candidates by using qRT-PCR. Finally, highly expressed six candidates were identified as the original target regions by DNA sequencing.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biosciences and Informatics, Keio University, 3-14-1 Hiyoshi, Kohoku-ku, Yokohama, Kanagawa 223-8522, Japan.
authors.forename: Kensuke
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Morita
authors.forename: Yutaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Saito
authors.forename: Kengo
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sato
authors.forename: Kotaro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Oka
authors.forename: Kohji
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hotta
authors.forename: Yasubumi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Sakakibara
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001185:Artificial Intelligence; D020029:Base Pairing; D001483:Base Sequence; D017173:Caenorhabditis elegans / Q000235:genetics* / Q000378:metabolism; D015870:Gene Expression; D049751:Genome, Helminth; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009690:Nucleic Acid Conformation; D020537:RNA, Small Nucleolar / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000145:classification / Q000378:metabolism; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA / Q000379:methods*
chemical_list: D020537:RNA, Small Nucleolar