Bioinformatics in the service of genetics

The most modern genetic technologies require the analysis of huge amounts of data, hence the need for IT tools supporting the work of scientists. Thanks to publicly available databases, it is possible to cooperate and exchange data in the scientific community.

The bioinformatics group of the Institute of Human Genetics PAS was established in the years 2017/2018. Since that time, the creation of RNA databases and bioinformatics tools as well as the use of bioinformatics tools in the field of broadly understood RNA structural bioinformatics began. These projects utilize Python programming to study the structural biology of RNA.

As a result of this research, an up-to-date and user-friendly database of sequences and structures of tRNA molecules was prepared under the name T-psi-C. A unique feature of the T-psi-C database is the ability to add entries by any tRNA scientist. After verification by the authors, such an entry will be placed in the database.

This solution ensures its constant updating.

In addition, the RNAlign2D program was developed to compare multiple RNA molecules based on their secondary structure, which uses our team’s proprietary solution, the so-called pseudo-amino acid substitution matrix that allows sequences to be saved along with the secondary structure of RNA as pseudo-amino acid sequences and the alignment of multiple protein sequences. This increases the speed of actions, especially with a large number of sequences.