miRTrace quality control of small RNA-Seq data prepared from low-input, degraded and contamianted HEK-293T RNA samples

miRTrace is a tool for quality control and tracing taxonomic origins of microRNA sequencing data. It operates in two modes: Trace mode, in which the software reports the composition of clade-specific miRNAs; and QC mode, in which it performed an all-round quality control. To validate the QC mode of the software, we subjected the in-house control samples from HEK-293T cells to various treatments, such as cross-species contamiantion with Drosophila S2 RNAs, sample dilution and RNase A digestion. These samples were processed using QC mode of miRTrace. We demonstrate that miRTrace accurately identities poor-quality samples and to some extent even the causes of the compromised quality. miRTrace quality control profiles of standard HEK-293T and Drosophila S2 samples (with 1000 ng total RNA as input) and compromised HEK-293T samples that are contaminated with S2 RNAs in ratio 10:1, 100:1 and 1000:1, diluted to 50 ng and degraded with RNase A enzyme.