title: miEAA: microRNA enrichment analysis and annotation.
abstract: Similar to the development of gene set enrichment and gene regulatory network analysis tools over a decade ago, microRNA enrichment tools are currently gaining importance. Building on our experience with the gene set analysis toolkit GeneTrail, we implemented the miRNA Enrichment Analysis and Annotation tool (miEAA). MiEAA is a web-based application that offers a variety of commonly applied statistical tests such as over-representation analysis and miRNA set enrichment analysis, which is similar to Gene Set Enrichment Analysis. Besides the different statistical tests, miEAA also provides rich functionality in terms of miRNA categories. Altogether, over 14 000 miRNA sets have been added, including pathways, diseases, organs and target genes. Importantly, our tool can be applied for miRNA precursors as well as mature miRNAs. To make the tool as useful as possible we additionally implemented supporting tools such as converters between different miRBase versions and converters from miRNA names to precursor names. We evaluated the performance of miEAA on two sets of miRNAs that are affected in lung adenocarcinomas and have been detected by array analysis. The web-based application is freely accessible at: http://www.ccb.uni-saarland.de/mieaa_tool/.
authors.affiliation: Chair for Clinical Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Building E 2.1, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany c.backes@mx.uni-saarland.de.
authors.forename: Christina
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Backes
authors.affiliation: Chair for Clinical Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Building E 2.1, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
authors.forename: Qurratulain T
authors.initials: QT
authors.lastname: Khaleeq
authors.affiliation: Institute of Human Genetics, Saarland University, Medical School, 66421 Homburg, Germany.
authors.forename: Eckart
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Meese
authors.affiliation: Chair for Clinical Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Building E 2.1, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany.
authors.forename: Andreas
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Keller
mesh_terms: D030541:Databases, Genetic; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D005786:Gene Expression Regulation; D063990:Gene Ontology; D006801:Humans; D020407:Internet; D035683:MicroRNAs / Q000235:genetics*; D058977:Molecular Sequence Annotation; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics; D019636:Neurodegenerative Diseases / Q000235:genetics; D012322:RNA Precursors / Q000235:genetics*; D014584:User-Computer Interface
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs; D012322:RNA Precursors