miRToolsGallery : a tag-based and rankable microRNA bioinformatics resources database portal

Abstract

Hundreds of bioinformatics tools have been developed for MicroRNA (miRNA) investigations including those used for identification, target prediction, structure and expression profile analysis. However, finding the correct tool for a specific application requires the tedious and laborious process of locating, downloading, testing and validating the appropriate tool from a group of nearly a thousand. In order to facilitate this process, we developed a novel database portal named miRToolsGallery. We constructed the portal by manually curating > 950 miRNA analysis tools and resources. In the portal, a query to locate the appropriate tool is expedited by being searchable, filterable and rankable. The ranking feature is vital to quickly identify and prioritize the more useful from the obscure tools. Tools are ranked via different criteria including the PageRank algorithm, date of publication, number of citations, average of votes and number of publications. miRToolsGallery provides links and data for the comprehensive collection of currently available miRNA tools with a ranking function which can be adjusted using different criteria according to specific requirements.