Nuno D. Mendes

Current tools for the identification of miRNA genes and their targets

The discovery of microRNAs (miRNAs), almost 10 years ago, changed dramatically our perspective on eukaryotic gene expression regulation. However, the broad and important functions of these regulators are only now becoming apparent. The expansion of our catalogue of miRNA genes and the identification of the genes they regulate owe much to the development of sophisticated computational tools that have helped either to focus or interpret experimental assays. In this article, we review the methods for miRNA gene finding and target identification that have been proposed in the last few years. We identify some problems that current approaches have not yet been able to overcome and we offer some perspectives on the next generation of computational methods.

YEASTRACT-DISCOVERER: new tools to improve the analysis of transcriptional regulatory associations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

The Yeast search for transcriptional regulators and consensus tracking (YEASTRACT) information system (www.yeastract.com) was developed to support the analysis of transcription regulatory associations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Last updated in September 2007, this database contains over 30 990 regulatory associations between Transcription Factors (TFs) and target genes and includes 284 specific DNA binding sites for 108 characterized TFs. Computational tools are also provided to facilitate the exploitation of the gathered data when solving a number of biological questions, in particular the ones that involve the analysis of global gene expression results. In this new release, YEASTRACT includes DISCOVERER, a set of computational tools that can be used to identify complex motifs over-represented in the promoter regions of co-regulated genes. The motifs identified are then clustered in families, represented by a position weight matrix and are automatically compared with the known transcription factor binding sites described in YEASTRACT. Additionally, in this new release, it is possible to generate graphic depictions of transcriptional regulatory networks for documented or potential regulatory associations between TFs and target genes. The visual display of these networks of interactions is instrumental in functional studies. Tutorials are available on the system to exemplify the use of all the available tools.

MUSA: a parameter free algorithm for the identification of biologically significant motifs

MOTIVATION The ability to identify complex motifs, i.e. non-contiguous nucleotide sequences, is a key feature of modern motif finders. Addressing this problem is extremely important, not only because these motifs can accurately model biological phenomena but because its extraction is highly dependent upon the appropriate selection of numerous search parameters. Currently available combinatorial algorithms have proved to be highly efficient in exhaustively enumerating motifs (including complex motifs), which fulfill certain extraction criteria. However, one major problem with these methods is the large number of parameters that need to be specified. RESULTS We propose a new algorithm, MUSA (Motif finding using an UnSupervised Approach), that can be used either to autonomously find over-represented complex motifs or to estimate search parameters for modern motif finders. This method relies on a biclustering algorithm that operates on a matrix of co-occurrences of small motifs. The performance of this method is independent of the composite structure of the motifs being sought, making few assumptions about their characteristics. The MUSA algorithm was applied to two datasets involving the bacterium Pseudomonas putida KT2440. The first one was composed of 70 sigma(54)-dependent promoter sequences and the second dataset included 54 promoter sequences of up-regulated genes in response to phenol, as suggested by quantitative proteomics. The results obtained indicate that this approach is very effective at identifying complex motifs of biological significance. AVAILABILITY The MUSA algorithm is available upon request from the authors, and will be made available via a Web based interface.

Combination of measures distinguishes pre-miRNAs from other stem-loops in the genome of the newly sequenced Anopheles darlingi.

BackgroundEfforts using computational algorithms towards the enumeration of the full set of miRNAs of an organism have been limited by strong reliance on arguments of precursor conservation and feature similarity. However, miRNA precursors may arise anew or be lost across the evolutionary history of a species and a newly sequenced genome may be evolutionarily too distant from other genomes for an adequate comparative analysis. In addition, the learning of intricate classification rules based purely on features shared by miRNA precursors that are currently known may reflect a perpetuating identification bias rather than a sound means to tell true miRNAs from other genomic stem-loops.ResultsWe show that there is a strong bias amongst annotated pre-miRNAs towards robust stem-loops in the genomes of Drosophila melanogaster and Anopheles gambiae and we propose a scoring scheme for precursor candidates which combines four robustness measures. Additionally, we identify several known pre-miRNA homologs in the newly sequenced Anopheles darlingi and show that most are found amongst the top-scoring precursor candidates. Furthermore, a comparison of the performance of our approach is made against two single-genome pre-miRNA classification methods.ConclusionsIn this paper we present a strategy to sieve through the vast amount of stem-loops found in metazoan genomes in search of pre-miRNAs, significantly reducing the set of candidates while retaining most known miRNA precursors. This approach makes no use of conservation data and relies solely on properties derived from our knowledge of miRNA biogenesis.

A Computational Approach for MicroRNA Identification in Plants: Combining Genome-Based Predictions with RNA-Seq Data

MicroRNAs are endogenous molecules that act by silencing targeted messenger RNAs, and which have an important regulatory role in many physiological processes in both plants and animals. Here, we propose a pipeline that makes use of CRAVELA, a single-genome microRNA finding tool originally developed for microRNA discovery in animals, and an NGS data analysis algorithm that provides a novel scoring function to evaluate the expression profile of candidates, taking advantage of the expected relative abundance of RNA fragments originating from the mature sequence, compared to other portions of the microRNA precursor. This approach was tested in Eucalyptus spp. for which, despite their economic importance, no microRNAs have been documented. The outcome of our approach was a short list of candidates, including both conserved and non-conserved sequences. Experimental validation showed amplification in 6 out of 8 candidates chosen from the best-scoring non-conserved sequences.

Composition and abstraction of logical regulatory modules

MOTIVATION Logical (Boolean or multi-valued) modelling is widely used to study regulatory or signalling networks. Even though these discrete models constitute a coarse, yet useful, abstraction of reality, the analysis of large networks faces a classical combinatorial problem. Here, we propose to take advantage of the intrinsic modularity of inter-cellular networks to set up a compositional procedure that enables a significant reduction of the dynamics, yet preserving the reachability of stable states. To that end, we rely on process algebras, a well-established computational technique for the specification and verification of interacting systems. RESULTS We develop a novel compositional approach to support the logical modelling of interconnected cellular networks. First, we formalize the concept of logical regulatory modules and their composition. Then, we make this framework operational by transposing the composition of logical modules into a process algebra framework. Importantly, the combination of incremental composition, abstraction and minimization using an appropriate equivalence relation (here the safety equivalence) yields huge reductions of the dynamics. We illustrate the potential of this approach with two case-studies: the Segment-Polarity and the Delta-Notch modules.

Navigating the unexplored seascape of pre-miRNA candidates in single-genome approaches

Motivation: The computational search for novel microRNA (miRNA) precursors often involves some sort of structural analysis with the aim of identifying which type of structures are prone to being recognized and processed by the cellular miRNA-maturation machinery. A natural way to tackle this problem is to perform clustering over the candidate structures along with known miRNA precursor structures. Mixed clusters allow then the identification of candidates that are similar to known precursors. Given the large number of pre-miRNA candidates that can be identified in single-genome approaches, even after applying several filters for precursor robustness and stability, a conventional structural clustering approach is unfeasible. Results: We propose a method to represent candidate structures in a feature space, which summarizes key sequence/structure characteristics of each candidate. We demonstrate that proximity in this feature space is related to sequence/structure similarity, and we select candidates that have a high similarity to known precursors. Additional filtering steps are then applied to further reduce the number of candidates to those with greater transcriptional potential. Our method is compared with another single-genome method (TripletSVM) in two datasets, showing better performance in one and comparable performance in the other, for larger training sets. Additionally, we show that our approach allows for a better interpretation of the results. Availability and Implementation: The MinDist method is implemented using Perl scripts and is freely available at http://www.cravela.org/?mindist=1. Contact: backofen@informatik.uni-freiburg.de Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Estimating Attractor Reachability in Asynchronous Logical Models

Logical models are well-suited to capture salient dynamical properties of regulatory networks. For networks controlling cell fate decisions, cell fates are associated with model attractors (stable states or cyclic attractors) whose identification and reachability properties are particularly relevant. While synchronous updates assume unlikely instantaneous or identical rates associated with component changes, the consideration of asynchronous updates is more realistic but, for large models, may hinder the analysis of the resulting non-deterministic concurrent dynamics. This complexity hampers the study of asymptotical behaviors, and most existing approaches suffer from efficiency bottlenecks, being generally unable to handle cyclical attractors and quantify attractor reachability. Here, we propose two algorithms providing probability estimates of attractor reachability in asynchronous dynamics. The first algorithm, named Firefront, exhaustively explores the state space from an initial state, and provides quasi-exact evaluations of the reachability probabilities of model attractors. The algorithm progresses in breadth, propagating the probabilities of each encountered state to its successors. Second, Avatar is an adapted Monte Carlo approach, better suited for models with large and intertwined transient and terminal cycles. Avatar iteratively explores the state space by randomly selecting trajectories and by using these random walks to estimate the likelihood of reaching an attractor. Unlike Monte Carlo simulations, Avatar is equipped to avoid getting trapped in transient cycles and to identify cyclic attractors. Firefront and Avatar are validated and compared to related methods, using as test cases logical models of synthetic and biological networks. Both algorithms are implemented as new functionalities of GINsim 3.0, a well-established software tool for logical modeling, providing executable GUI, Java API, and scripting facilities.