RIblast: An ultrafast RNA-RNA interaction prediction system for comprehensive lncRNA interaction analysis

Abstract

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play important roles in various biological processes. Although more than 58,000 human lncRNA genes have been discovered, most known lncRNAs are still poorly characterised. One approach to understanding the functions of lncRNAs is the detection of the interacting RNA target of each lncRNA. Because experimental detection of comprehensive lncRNA-RNA interactions are difficult, computational prediction of lncRNA-RNA interactions is an indispensable technique. However, the high computational costs of existing RNA-RNA interaction prediction tools prevents their application to large-scale lncRNA datasets. Here, we present \"RIblast\", an ultrafast RNA-RNA interaction prediction method based on the seed-and-extension approach. RIblast discovers seed regions using suffix arrays and subsequently extends seed regions based on an RNA secondary structure energy model. Computational experiments indicate that RIblast achieves a level of prediction accuracy similar to those of existing programs, but at speeds over 64 times faster than existing programs.