Genome mapping

Let’s explore some other features of the sequence pages.

Viewing entries in their genomic context

RNAcentral genome annotations are based on a comprehensive mapping procedure that aligns all sequences without genome coordinates to the corresponding reference genome.¹ RNAcentral maps the sequences onto the most recent reference genome assembly from Ensembl. This procedure finds coordinates for ncRNA sequences from a database without an explicit connection to genome, such as the ENA.⁸

If a member database provides the genome locations to RNAcentral when submitting the data, these coordinates are used and no mapping is performed. The source of genomic coordinates is specified both in the genome browser (Figure 3) and the GFF3 files in the FTP archive.

The RNAcentral genome mapping helped improve model organism database annotations. For example, ten D. melanogaster snoRNA genes from the ENA database were added to FlyBase after these sequences were mapped to the fly genome in RNAcentral.¹

Tip: Entries with genomic mapping can be found using RNAcentral search by selecting the Genomic mapping facet in the RNAcentral search as shown below (Figure 4).