- Course overview
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- What is Rfam?
- What is an Rfam family?
- What can I do with Rfam?
- Searching and visualising data in Rfam
- Getting data from Rfam
- Submitting data to Rfam
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- Get help and support on Rfam
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What is Rfam?
Rfam is a database of non-coding RNA. We classify non-coding RNAs into families, using multiple sequence alignments, consensus secondary structure and covariance models. Based on known members of a given RNA family, we create mathematical models that are used to computationally search sequence databases to identify new members of the family.
Each family in Rfam is assigned to one of three categories:
- non-coding RNA genes
- structured cis-regulatory elements
- self-splicing introns
These are further subdivided into more specialised categories. We do not include piRNAs or short RNAs.
Why do we need Rfam?
Rfam was established to make it easier to identify homologues of known non-coding RNA. We also provide comprehensive text and functional annotation for these sequences. Computational analysis of non-coding RNAs is time consuming when compared to doing similar searches on protein. We provide access to RNA search tools and results which require a lot of computational time and might not otherwise be accessible to scientists.