Identification of RNA Editing Sites: a Survey of the Past, Present, and Future
Meng How Tan and Jin Billy Li
from: RNA Editing: Current Research and Future Trends (Edited by: Stefan Maas). Caister Academic Press, U.K. (2013)
Abstract
RNA editing is a post-transcriptional mechanism whereby genomically encoded information is altered at the level of the transcript. We describe in this chapter how RNA editing sites can be identified. The pace of discovery in the past few decades was dependent on the sequencing technologies available at a particular time. At the beginning when DNA sequencing had just been developed and automated, the identification of RNA editing sites was slow and often occurred by chance. Over time, as more and more sequences were deposited in databases, it became possible for scientists to computationally mine the databases for more editing sites. In recent years, with the development of ultra-high throughput sequencing technologies whereby millions to billions of DNA molecules are sequenced simultaneously, scientists can now uncover RNA editing sites in a genome-wide manner. However, extra care has to be taken during the analysis process to remove artifacts and to ensure that true editing sites are identified read more ...
