title: miRge - A Multiplexed Method of Processing Small RNA-Seq Data to Determine MicroRNA Entropy.
abstract: Small RNA RNA-seq for microRNAs (miRNAs) is a rapidly developing field where opportunities still exist to create better bioinformatics tools to process these large datasets and generate new, useful analyses. We built miRge to be a fast, smart small RNA-seq solution to process samples in a highly multiplexed fashion. miRge employs a Bayesian alignment approach, whereby reads are sequentially aligned against customized mature miRNA, hairpin miRNA, noncoding RNA and mRNA sequence libraries. miRNAs are summarized at the level of raw reads in addition to reads per million (RPM). Reads for all other RNA species (tRNA, rRNA, snoRNA, mRNA) are provided, which is useful for identifying potential contaminants and optimizing small RNA purification strategies. miRge was designed to optimally identify miRNA isomiRs and employs an entropy based statistical measurement to identify differential production of isomiRs. This allowed us to identify decreasing entropy in isomiRs as stem cells mature into retinal pigment epithelial cells. Conversely, we show that pancreatic tumor miRNAs have similar entropy to matched normal pancreatic tissues. In a head-to-head comparison with other miRNA analysis tools (miRExpress 2.0, sRNAbench, omiRAs, miRDeep2, Chimira, UEA small RNA Workbench), miRge was faster (4 to 32-fold) and was among the top-two methods in maximally aligning miRNAs reads per sample. Moreover, miRge has no inherent limits to its multiplexing. miRge was capable of simultaneously analyzing 100 small RNA-Seq samples in 52 minutes, providing an integrated analysis of miRNA expression across all samples. As miRge was designed for analysis of single as well as multiple samples, miRge is an ideal tool for high and low-throughput users. miRge is freely available at http://atlas.pathology.jhu.edu/baras/miRge.html.
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Alexander S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Baras
authors.affiliation: McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Christopher J
authors.initials: CJ
authors.lastname: Mitchell
authors.affiliation: Genomics Research Center, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: Jason R
authors.initials: JR
authors.lastname: Myers
authors.affiliation: McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Simone
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Gupta
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Lien-Chun
authors.initials: LC
authors.lastname: Weng
authors.affiliation: Genomics Research Center, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, United States of America.
authors.forename: John M
authors.initials: JM
authors.lastname: Ashton
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Toby C
authors.initials: TC
authors.lastname: Cornish
authors.affiliation: McKusick-Nathans Institute of Genetic Medicine, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.|Department of Biological Chemistry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Akhilesh
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pandey
authors.affiliation: Department of Pathology, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, Maryland, United States of America.
authors.forename: Marc K
authors.initials: MK
authors.lastname: Halushka
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D002454:Cell Differentiation; D002478:Cells, Cultured; D019295:Computational Biology; D053595:Embryonic Stem Cells / Q000502:physiology; D019277:Entropy; D006801:Humans; D051379:Mice; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics*; D055213:Retinal Pigment Epithelium / Q000502:physiology; D017423:Sequence Analysis, RNA; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs