RNA-Chrom: a manually-curated analytical database of RNA-chromatin interactome

Every year there is more and more evidence that non-coding RNAs play an important role in biological processes affecting various levels of organisation of living systems: from the cellular (regulation of gene expression, remodeling and maintenance of chromatin structure, co-transcriptional suppression of transposons, splicing, post-transcriptional RNA modifications, etc.), to cell populations and even organismal ones (development, aging, cancer, cardiovascular and many other diseases). The development and creation of mutually complementary databases that will aggregate, unify and structure different types of data can help to reach the system-level of studying non-coding RNAs. Here we present the RNA-Chrom manually-curated analytical database, which contains the coordinates of billions of contacts of thousands of human and mouse RNAs with chromatin. Through the user-friendly web interface (https://rnachrom2.bioinf.fbb.msu.ru/), two approaches to the analysis of the RNA-chromatin interactome were implemented. Firstly, to find out whether the RNA of interest to a user contacts with chromatin, and if so, with which genes or DNA loci? Secondly, to find out which RNAs are in contact with the DNA locus of interest to a user (and probably participate in its regulation), and if there are such, what is the nature of their interaction? For a more detailed study of contact maps and their comparison with other data, the web interface allows a user to view them in the UCSC Genome Browser.