eRNA-IDO: a one-stop platform for identification, interactome discovery and functional annotation of enhancer RNAs

Increasing evidence proves the transcription of enhancer RNA (eRNA) and its important role in gene regulation. However, we are only at the infancy stage of understanding eRNA interactions with other biomolecules and the corresponding functionality. To accelerate eRNA mechanistic study, we present the first integrative computational platform for human eRNA identification, interactome discovery, and functional annotation, termed eRNA-IDO. eRNA-IDO comprises two modules: eRNA-ID and eRNA-Anno. Functionally, eRNA-ID identifies eRNAs from de novo assembled transcriptomes. The bright spot of eRNA-ID is indeed the inclusion of 8 kinds of enhancer makers, whose combination enables users to personalize enhancer regions flexibly and conveniently. In addition, eRNA-Anno provides cell/tissue specific functional annotation for any novel and known eRNAs through discovering eRNA interactome from the prebuilt or user-defined eRNA-coding gene networks. The pre-built networks include GTEx-based normal co-expression networks, TCGA-based cancer co-expression networks, and omics-based eRNA-centric regulatory networks. Our eRNA-IDO carries sufficient practicability and significance for understanding the biogenesis and functions of eRNAs. The eRNA-IDO server is freely available at http://bioinfo.szbl.ac.cn/eRNA_IDO/.