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2.1

RNA is therefore at the root of life and is a particularly active intermediate carrier of

information. Just recently, much faster sequencing techniques than in the past have made

it possible to read virtually all RNA molecules in the cell. Because bioinformatics can

classify this large amount of sequenced RNA quickly enough (Chang et al. 2013), we are

only now beginning to recognize the many functions that RNA mediates. Examples of

such newly recognized RNA molecules are the regulatory miRNAs and lncRNAs that have

been newly described for the past 5–10 years (Kunz et al. 2015, 2016, 2017; Fiedler et al.

2015). These play essential roles in various diseases, and bioinformatics can make an

important contribution to uncovering this. To this end, we have developed various methods

and analytical tools for integrative analysis of RNAs (Kunz et al. 2018, 2020; Stojanović

et al. 2020; Fuchs et al. 2020). For example, our bioinformatics work could help to uncover

the function of Chast-lncRNA in heart failure (Viereck et al. 2016) or molecular mecha­

nisms of miRNA-21 in cardiac fibrosis (Fuchs et al. 2020).

2.2

Analysis of RNA Sequence, Structure and Function

A number of options are available for analysing RNA, e.g. databases such as Rfam, soft­

ware such as the RNAAnalyzer and RNAfold. In the following, we would like to intro­

duce these.

2.2  Analysis of RNA Sequence, Structure and Function