DIANA-Tools

microRNAs (miRNAs) are small non-coding RNAs (~22 nts) that are considered central post-transcriptional regulators of gene expression and key components in many pathological conditions. Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies have led to inexpensive, massive data production, revolutionizing every research aspect in the fields of biology and medicine. Particularly, small RNA-Seq (sRNA-Seq) enables small non-coding RNA quantification on a high-throughput scale, providing a closer look into the expression profiles of these crucial regulators within the cell.

Here, we present DIANA-microRNA-Analysis-Pipeline (DIANA-mAP), a fully automated computational pipeline that allows the user to perform miRNA NGS data analysis from raw sRNA-Seq libraries to quantification and Differential Expression Analysis in an easy, scalable, efficient, and intuitive way. Emphasis has been given to data pre-processing, an early, critical step in the analysis for the robustness of the final results and conclusions. Through modularity, parallelizability and customization, DIANA-mAP produces high quality expression results, reports and graphs for downstream data mining and statistical analysis. In an extended evaluation, the tool outperforms similar tools providing pre-processing without any adapter knowledge. Closing, DIANA-mAP is a freely available tool. It is available dockerized with no dependency installations or standalone, accompanied by an installation manual through Github.

DIANA-mAP was published in Genes (2021):

Alexiou, A., Zisis, D., Kavakiotis, I., Miliotis, M., Koussounadis, A., Karagkouni, D., & Hatzigeorgiou, A. G. (2021). DIANA-mAP: Analyzing miRNA from Raw NGS Data to Quantification. Genes, 12(1), 46. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes12010046

DIANA-mAP was funded by “ELIXIR-GR: The Greek Research Infrastructure for Data Management and Analysis in Life Sciences” (MIS 5002780) which is implemented under the Action “Reinforcement of the Research and Innovation Infrastructure”, funded by the Operational Programme “Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation” (NSRF 2014-2020) and co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund)