miRTrace

miRTrace traces the taxonomic origin of microRNA (miRNA) sequencing reads and performs quality control to detect and computationally clean cross-species contamination.

Key Features:

• Taxonomic Tracing: Assigns real and simulated miRNA sequencing data to 14 animal and plant groups with over 99% accuracy.
• Cross-Contamination Detection: Detects cross-contamination within mammalian samples, including parasitic infections, and identified that over 7% of more than 700 public datasets are affected.
• Computational Cleaning Solution: Provides a computational approach to clean contaminated datasets post-sequencing.
• Single-Cell Origin Discovery: Determines the primate origin of single cells within mixed samples.

Scientific Applications:

• Forensics: Identifies species-specific miRNAs in complex samples to support taxonomic attribution in forensic investigations.
• Parasitology and Food Control: Detects parasitic infections and cross-species contamination relevant to food safety and sample integrity.
• Research Settings: Validates and corrects miRNA sequencing datasets where cross-species contamination may compromise experimental results.

Methodology:

Analyzes miRNA sequencing data using computational algorithms that leverage an extensive database of taxonomic signatures to assign sequences to taxonomic origins, with performance evaluated on real and simulated datasets.