miRNA-Seq Analysis and Rapid Application Development in the Cloud

Abstract

As mRNA silencers, miRNAs play an important role in regulating gene expression. With sequencing, scientists now can observe miRNA expression at the base level. We have developed a sample-to-answer application for miRNA-Seq data analysis in the cloud. The application performs miRNA profiling based on information in the microRNA database and optionally novel miRNA discovery using miRDeep*. DESeq2 is used for pairwise differential expression analysis and the user interface allows setting up analyses with ease. The analysis report is easy to navigate and allows visualization of mature miRNAs and isomiRs on a precursor. The application was developed on BaseSpace as a native application utilizing Amazon EC2. Finally, we demonstrate the rapid development of a native application based on a recently published R library.