piRPheno: a manually curated database to prioritize and analyze human disease related piRNAs

Abstract

Many studies have uncovered that piRNAs (PIWI-interacting RNA) are associated with a broad range of diseases and might be a novel type of biomarkers and targets for precision medicine. However, public resource of high-quality curated human disease-associated piRNAs remains unavailable. Therefore, we developed the piRPheno (http://www.biomedical-web.com/pirpheno) database to provide an up-to-date, interactive and extensible data reference for human piRNA-disease associations. piRPheno includes 9057 experimentally supported associations between 474 piRNAs and 204 diseases through a manual curation of publications. To prioritize the piRNA-disease associations, each association in piRPheno is assigned with a confidence score and clinical correlations based on the experimentally supported evidences. piRPheno is freely available with user-friendly interface and novel applications to enable easy exploration and analysis of the human disease related piRNAs.