Prediction of C-to-U RNA editing sites in plant mitochondria using both biochemical and evolutionary information

Although cytidine-to-uridine conversions in plant mitochondria were discovered 18 years ago, it was still an enigmatic process. Since the sequencing projects of plant mitochondrial genomes are providing more and more available sequences, the requirements of computationally identifying C-to-U RNA editing sites are also increasing. By incorporating both evolutionary and biochemical information, we developed a novel algorithm for predicting C-to-U RNA editing sites in plant mitochondria. The algorithm has been implemented as an online service called CURE (Cytidine-to-Uridine Recognizing Editor). CURE performs better than other methods that are based on only biochemical or only evolutionary information. CURE also provides the ability of predicting C-to-U RNA editing sites in non-coding regions and the synonymous C-to-U RNA editing sites in coding regions that are impossible for other methods. Furthermore, CURE can carry out prediction directly on the entire mitochondria genome sequence. The prediction results of CURE suggest the functional importance of synonymous RNA editing sites, which was neglected before. The CURE service can be accessed at http://bioinfo.au.tsinghua.edu.cn/cure.