Finding Non-coding RNAs Through Genome-Scale Clustering

Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) are transcripts that do not code for proteins. Recent findings have shown that RNA-mediated regulatory mechanisms influence a substantial portion of typical microbial genomes. We present an efficient method for finding potential ncRNAs in bacteria by clustering genomic sequences based on homology inferred from both primary sequence and secondary structure. We evaluate our approach using a set of predominantly Firmicutes sequences. Our results showed that, though primary sequence based-homology search was inaccurate for diverged ncRNA sequences, through our clustering method, we were able to infer motifs that recovered nearly all members of most known ncRNA families. Hence, our method shows promise for discovering new families of ncRNA.