An overview of RNA informatics: from sequence to structure, from structure to function

A variety of RNA molecules have been found in the last two decades with a wide range of biological functions beyond the traditional roles of the well-known coding RNA (messenger RNA or mRNA) and non-coding RNA (ribosomal and transfer RNA). Over twenty years ago, the discovery of the catalytic properties of the RNA subunit of the ribonuclease P and the self-splicing activity of group I introns suggested that the functions of RNA go far beyond a passive role in the expression of protein-coding genes. In the last few years, it has been shown that non-coding RNA (ncRNA) are not only involved in various catalysis (peptide bond formation, pre-mRNA splicing, maturation of pre-tRNA, mitochondrial RNA processing, etc), but also in gene regulations (transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulators), and protein function modulations via RNA/protein interactions. The postgenomic area will certainly reveal a lot of other ncRNA since 98% of the transcriptional output of eukaryotic genomes is RNA that does not encode protein.