CircMiMi: a stand-alone software for constructing circular RNA-microRNA-mRNA interactions across species
Tai-Wei Chiang1, Te-Lun Mai2, and Trees-Juen Chuang1*
Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a class of non-coding RNAs formed by pre-mRNA back-splicing, which are widely expressed in animal/plant cells and often play an important role in regulating microRNA (miRNA) activities. While numerous databases have collected a large amount of predicted circRNA candidates and provided the corresponding circRNA-regulated interactions, a stand-alone package for constructing circRNA-miRNA-mRNA interactions based on user-identified circRNAs across species is lacking. Here we present CircMiMi (circRNA-miRNA-mRNA interactions), a modular, Python-based software to identify circRNA-miRNA-mRNA interactions across 18 species (including 16 animals and 2 plants) with the given coordinates of circRNA junctions. The CircMiMi-constructed circRNA-miRNA-mRNA interactions are derived from circRNA-miRNA and miRNA-mRNA axes with the support of computational predictions and/or experimental data. CircMiMi also allows users to examine alignment ambiguity of back-splice junctions for checking circRNA reliability and examine reverse complementary sequences residing in the sequences flanking the circularized exons for investigating circRNA formation.