Abstract
MicroRNAs and other small RNAs are known to play important functions in gene regulation. Over the last years, it became also apparent that many virus genomes encode microRNAs and that those strongly interact with the host transcriptome. Important functions include the evasion of the immune response and the regulation of the switch to lytic infection. Since the advent of deep sequencing protocols for small RNAs, expression profiles can be routinely determined. However, currently the tools developed for the data analysis of small RNA deep sequencing experiments are limited to the analysis of only one species at a time. In order to facilitate the analysis of experimental setups that include genetic material from several species, we developed sRNAbench. It maintains the main features implemented in its predecessor program, miRanalyzer, and includes new functionalities such as full isomiR support including statistical test on differential frequency, improved prediction of novel microRNAs, extended summary files and data visualization support. Both a standalone program and a webserver are available at http://bioinfo5.ugr.es/sRNAbench/.
[Link][1 to publication
