BIQ: A method for searching circular RNAs in transcriptome databases by indexing backsplice junctions

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a class of RNA transcripts that originate from non-canonical splicing events and are characterized by a backsplice junction connecting the 3 splice site to an upstream 5 splice site. Here, we present the program BIQ for indexing and querying transcriptome sequencing datasets for backsplice junctions. BIQ can be used for instantaneously querying all indexed transcriptomes for occurrence and abundance of reads overlapping the backsplice junction of a particular circular RNA, which can help in the functional characterization of known and novel circular RNAs. BIQ is free software and available at https://github.com/pmenzel/biq.