Characterization and identification of long non-coding RNAs based on feature relationship.
Guangyu Wang, Hongyan Yin, Boyang Li, Chunlei Yu, Fan Wang, Xingjian Xu, Jiabao Cao, Yiming Bao, Liguo Wang, Amir A Abbasi, Vladimir B Bajic, Lina Ma, Zhang Zhang
Author Information
Guangyu Wang: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Hongyan Yin: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Boyang Li: Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, CT, USA.
Chunlei Yu: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Fan Wang: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Xingjian Xu: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Jiabao Cao: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Yiming Bao: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Liguo Wang: Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics, Mayo Clinic College of Medicine, Rochester, MN, USA.
Amir A Abbasi: National Center for Bioinformatics, Programme of Comparative and Evolutionary Genomics, Faculty of Biological Sciences, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan.
Vladimir B Bajic: King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Computational Bioscience Research Center (CBRC), Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering Division (CEMSE), Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Lina Ma: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
Zhang Zhang: CAS Key Laboratory of Genome Sciences and Information, Beijing Institute of Genomics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.
MOTIVATION: The significance of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in many biological processes and diseases has gained intense interests over the past several years. However, computational identification of lncRNAs in a wide range of species remains challenging; it requires prior knowledge of well-established sequences and annotations or species-specific training data, but the reality is that only a limited number of species have high-quality sequences and annotations. RESULTS: Here we first characterize lncRNAs in contrast to protein-coding RNAs based on feature relationship and find that the feature relationship between open reading frame length and guanine-cytosine (GC) content presents universally substantial divergence in lncRNAs and protein-coding RNAs, as observed in a broad variety of species. Based on the feature relationship, accordingly, we further present LGC, a novel algorithm for identifying lncRNAs that is able to accurately distinguish lncRNAs from protein-coding RNAs in a cross-species manner without any prior knowledge. As validated on large-scale empirical datasets, comparative results show that LGC outperforms existing algorithms by achieving higher accuracy, well-balanced sensitivity and specificity, and is robustly effective (>90% accuracy) in discriminating lncRNAs from protein-coding RNAs across diverse species that range from plants to mammals. To our knowledge, this study, for the first time, differentially characterizes lncRNAs and protein-coding RNAs based on feature relationship, which is further applied in computational identification of lncRNAs. Taken together, our study represents a significant advance in characterization and identification of lncRNAs and LGC thus bears broad potential utility for computational analysis of lncRNAs in a wide range of species. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: LGC web server is publicly available at http://bigd.big.ac.cn/lgc/calculator. The scripts and data can be downloaded at http://bigd.big.ac.cn/biocode/tools/BT000004. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
