NONCODE v3.0: integrative annotation of long noncoding RNAs

Facilitated by the rapid progress of high-throughput sequencing technology, a large number of long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been identified in mammalian transcriptomes over the past few years. LncRNAs have been shown to play key roles in various biological processes such as imprinting control, circuitry controlling pluripotency and differentiation, immune responses and chromosome dynamics. Notably, a growing number of lncRNAs have been implicated in disease etiology. With the increasing number of published lncRNA studies, the experimental data on lncRNAs (e.g. expression profiles, molecular features and biological functions) have accumulated rapidly. In order to enable a systematic compilation and integration of this information, we have updated the NONCODE database (http://www.noncode.org) to version 3.0 to include the first integrated collection of expression and functional lncRNA data obtained from re-annotated microarray studies in a single database. NONCODE has a user-friendly interface with a variety of search or browse options, a local Genome Browser for visualization and a BLAST server for sequence-alignment search. In addition, NONCODE provides a platform for the ongoing collation of ncRNAs reported in the literature. All data in NONCODE are open to users, and can be downloaded through the website or obtained through the SOAP API and DAS services.