License Plates : automated short RNA nomenclature

"License Plates" is a nomenclature for the naming of short RNA molecules. The license plate of a short RNA is universal, unique, unambiguous, reversible, and determined automatically from its sequence. Each license plate has three parts, the prefix, the sequence length, and the encoded sequence. For example, the license plate of the 5'-tRF GCCGTGATCGTATAGTGG is tRF-18-PW5SVP04. The encoded part looks like a vehicle's license plate and hence the name! The key features of license plates are:

• Each short RNA has a unique license plate
• Each license plate represents a unique short RNA
• License plates are persistent and worry-free: they are not affected by changes/updates to the genome assembly or the nomenclature of their parental RNA
• License plates do not require a brokering entity - anyone can quickly determine the license plate of a new short RNA by using the below form or by downloading and running our code locally.

How to use this tool: enter a short RNA sequence to encode or a license plate to decode. If the short RNA is among the thousands of datasets that we have analyzed, this tool will also report if it is a miRNA/isomiR, transfer RNA-derived fragment (tRF), or a ribosomal RNA-derived fragment (rRF). When applicable, we also provide links to our other tools that offer more details on each molecule.