LncRNADisease: a database for long-non-coding RNA-associated diseases

Abstract

In this article, we describe a long-non-coding RNA (lncRNA) and disease association database (LncRNADisease), which is publicly accessible at http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/lncrnadisease. In recent years, a large number of lncRNAs have been identified and increasing evidence shows that lncRNAs play critical roles in various biological processes. Therefore, the dysfunctions of lncRNAs are associated with a wide range of diseases. It thus becomes important to understand lncRNAs' roles in diseases and to identify candidate lncRNAs for disease diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. For this purpose, a high-quality lncRNA-disease association database would be extremely beneficial. Here, we describe the LncRNADisease database that collected and curated approximately 480 entries of experimentally supported lncRNA-disease associations, including 166 diseases. LncRNADisease also curated 478 entries of lncRNA interacting partners at various molecular levels, including protein, RNA, miRNA and DNA. Moreover, we annotated lncRNA-disease associations with genomic information, sequences, references and species. We normalized the disease name and the type of lncRNA dysfunction and provided a detailed description for each entry. Finally, we developed a bioinformatic method to predict novel lncRNA-disease associations and integrated the method and the predicted associated diseases of 1564 human lncRNAs into the database.

Figure 1.

Statistics and distributions of diseases (A) and dysfunction types (B) of lncRNAs in the LncRNADisease database.

Figure 2.

Significance of lncRNAs sharing a common disease with their neighbor genes/miRNAs. Blue triangles indicate the distributions of numbers of lncRNAs associated with the same disease as their neighbor genes/miRNAs in random cases. The red arrow indicates the real number of lncRNAs associated with the same disease as their neighbor genes/miRNAs.