UTRdb and UTRsite: specialized databases of sequences and functional elements of 5′ and 3′ untranslated regions of eukaryotic mRNAs. Update 2002

The 5′- and 3′-untranslated regions (5′- and 3′-UTRs) of eukaryotic mRNAs are known to play a crucial role in post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression modulating nucleo-cytoplasmic mRNA transport, translation efficiency, subcellular localization and stability. UTRdb is a specialized database of 5′ and 3′ untranslated sequences of eukaryotic mRNAs cleaned from redundancy. UTRdb entries are enriched with specialized information not present in the primary databases including the presence of nucleotide sequence patterns already demonstrated by experimental analysis to have some functional role. All these patterns have been collected in the UTRsite database so that it is possible to search any input sequence for the presence of annotated functional motifs. Furthermore, UTRdb entries have been annotated for the presence of repetitive elements. All Internet resources we implemented for retrieval and functional analysis of 5′- and 3′-UTRs of eukaryotic mRNAs are accessible at http://bighost.area.ba.cnr.it/BIG/UTRHome/.