ASpedia-R: a package to retrieve junction-incorporating features and knowledge-based functions of human alternative...

Alternative splicing (AS) is a key regulatory mechanism that confers genetic diversity and phenotypic plasticity of human. The exons and their flanking regions include comprehensive junction-incorporating sequence features like splicing factor-binding sites and protein domains. These elements involve in exon usage and finally contribute to isoform-specific biological functions. Splicing-associated sequence features are involved in the multilayered regulation encompassing DNA and proteins. However, most analysis applications have investigated limited sequence features, like protein domains. It is insufficient to explain the comprehensive cause and effect of exon-specific biological processes.

With the advent of RNA-seq technology, global AS event analysis has deduced more precise results. As accumulating analysis results, it could be a challenge to identify multi-omics sequence features for AS events. Therefore, application to investigate multi-omics sequence features is useful to scan critical evidence. ASpedia-R is an R package to interrogate junction-incorporating sequence features for human genes. Our database collected the heterogeneous profile encompassed from DNA to protein. Additionally, knowledge-based splicing genes were collected using text-mining to test the association with specific pathway terms. Our package retrieves AS events for high-throughput data analysis results via AS event ID converter. Finally, result profile could be visualized and saved to multiple formats: sequence feature result table, genome track figure, protein-protein interaction network, and gene set enrichment test result table. Our package is a convenient tool to understand global regulation mechanisms by splicing.

The package source code is freely available to non-commercial users at https://github.com/ncc-bioinfo/ASpedia-R.