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Accelerated microRNA-Precursor Detection Using the Smith-Waterman Algorithm on FPGAs

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Distributed, High-Performance and Grid Computing in Computational Biology (GCCB 2007)

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Abstract

During the last few years more and more functionalities of RNA have been discovered that were previously thought of being carried out by proteins alone. One of the most striking discoveries was the detection of microRNAs, a class of noncoding RNAs that play an important role in post-transcriptional gene regulation. Large-scale analyses are needed for the still increasingly growing amount of sequence data derived from new experimental technologies. In this paper we present a framework for the detection of the distinctive precursor structure of microRNAS that is based on the well-known Smith-Waterman algorithm. By conducting the computation of the local alignment on a FPGA, we are able to gain a substantial speedup compared to a pure software implementation bringing together supercomputer performance and bioinformatics research. We conducted experiments on real genomic data and we found several new putative hits for microRNA precursor structures.

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Werner Dubitzky Assaf Schuster Peter M. A. Sloot Michael Schroeder Mathilde Romberg

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© 2007 Springer Berlin Heidelberg

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May, P., Klau, G.W., Bauer, M., Steinke, T. (2007). Accelerated microRNA-Precursor Detection Using the Smith-Waterman Algorithm on FPGAs. In: Dubitzky, W., Schuster, A., Sloot, P.M.A., Schroeder, M., Romberg, M. (eds) Distributed, High-Performance and Grid Computing in Computational Biology. GCCB 2007. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 4360. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-69968-2_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-69968-2_3

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-69841-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-69968-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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