Abstract:
Motivation: It can take considerable amounts of time and effort to use existing computational tools to analyze a small RNA sequence for the purpose of determining if it is characteristic of microRNA. It is similarly tedious to search for homologs to known microRNA sequences in the rapidly growing collection of genomic libraries. Results: Here I present a tool for automating the procedure used to locate loci for microRNA genes. Located sequences form a hairpin secondary structure and are conserved within the queried database(s). Availability: http://rnadev.science.oregonstate.edu/mirpal
