title: Exo-miRExplorer: A Comprehensive Resource for Exploring and Comparatively Analyzing Exogenous MicroRNAs.
abstract: MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small regulatory RNAs that play important roles in animals, plants, and viruses. Deep-sequencing technology has been widely adopted in miRNA investigations. However, it is still a big mysterious why nearly all sequencing data contain miRNA sequences from exogenous species, called exo-miRNAs. In this study, we developed a novel platform, exo-miRExplorer, for mining and identifying exo-miRNAs from high-throughput small RNA sequencing experiments which originated from tissues and cell lines of multiple organisms. Thousands of exo-miRNAs are characterized with their expression abundance, the RNA families, original organisms and the sequencing platforms presented in exo-miRExplorer. Subsequently, we used exo-miRExplorer to perform further analysis. Comparative analysis of the exo-miRNAs between different sequencing datasets revealed significant correlation of exo-miRNAs between experiments in the same study. The plant-derived exo-miRNAs analysis provided robust evidence for non-diet source of exo-miRNAs. Virus-derived exo-miRNA analysis showed that pathogen RNAs could transfer to host cells and exist in deep-sequencing result at abundance level. In conclusion, exo-miRExplorer provides users with an integrative resource to facilitate detection and analysis of exo-miRNAs. exo-miRExplorer is available at the following URL: http://rna.sysu.edu.cn/exomiRDB/.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, RNA Information Center, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Ling-Ling
authors.initials: LL
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, RNA Information Center, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Kai-Wen
authors.initials: KW
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, RNA Information Center, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: An-Cheng
authors.initials: AC
authors.lastname: Deng
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, RNA Information Center, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, RNA Information Center, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Jian-Hua
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, RNA Information Center, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Zhao-Rong
authors.initials: ZR
authors.lastname: Lun
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Gene Engineering of the Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Biocontrol, RNA Information Center, School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Liang-Hu
authors.initials: LH
authors.lastname: Qu
keywords: contamination; deep-sequencing; exogenous; microRNA; organisms