RNA Folding is a plugin for BLASTGrabber, a BLAST result management and analysis tool developed by the Microbial Evolution Research Group (MERG) at the Department of Biology, University of Oslo. RNA Folding not usable outside of the BLASTGrabber environment.
RNA Folding will fold any RNA sequence or set of sequences using the Vienna RNA Package RNAfold algorithm. However, RNA Folding was made to adress a very specific need for researchers working with microRNA (miRNA), and additional functionality is provided for this purpose. BLAST searches will frequently return a large number of hits. When searching for relatively short sequences of miRNA, the number of hits can be overwhelming. A number of these sequences may not be actual candidates for miRNA. The plugin allows researchers to see if the sequence forms a stable stem/hairpin loop structure with overlaid alignments and mature miRNA sequences, and thereby judge the validity of candidate hits.
This plugin is part of a computer science thesis, see the project page (in Norwegian).