title: Tools4miRs - one place to gather all the tools for miRNA analysis.
abstract: MiRNAs are short, non-coding molecules that negatively regulate gene expression and thereby play several important roles in living organisms. Dozens of computational methods for miRNA-related research have been developed, which greatly differ in various aspects. The substantial availability of difficult-to-compare approaches makes it challenging for the user to select a proper tool and prompts the need for a solution that will collect and categorize all the methods. Here, we present tools4miRs, the first platform that gathers currently more than 160 methods for broadly defined miRNA analysis. The collected tools are classified into several general and more detailed categories in which the users can additionally filter the available methods according to their specific research needs, capabilities and preferences. Tools4miRs is also a web-based target prediction meta-server that incorporates user-designated target prediction methods into the analysis of user-provided data.
  
  
  
  Tools4miRs is implemented in Python using Django and is freely available at tools4mirs.org.
  
  
  
  piotr@ibb.waw.pl
  
  
  
  Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Anna
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Lukasik
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Maciej
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wójcikowski
authors.affiliation: Institute of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, 02-106 Warsaw, Poland Department of Systems Biology, Institute of Experimental Plant Biology and Biotechnology, University of Warsaw, 02-096 Warsaw, Poland.
authors.forename: Piotr
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Zielenkiewicz
mesh_terms: D019295:Computational Biology / Q000379:methods; D035683:MicroRNAs; D008958:Models, Molecular; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D012984:Software
chemical_list: D035683:MicroRNAs