CORALIS, an R package for ncRNA-target enrichment analysis based on experimentally validated interactions

Abstract Non-coding RNAs are key regulatory molecules that govern a myriad of biological process by interacting and modulating the expression of their target protein-coding genes. The combination of RNA large-scale sequencing and computational analyses has revealed the existence of a vast diversity of RNA species with essential roles in biological functions. However, dealing with the huge network of interactions has become a challenge and the urgent need for new computational tools has arisen. We present CORALIS, an R package for the statistical analysis and visualization of experimentally validated interactions between non-coding RNAs and their target genes (ncRNA-mRNA). So far, CORALIS supports miRNA, lncRNA, snRNA and snoRNA target enrichment analysis for several species such as Homo sapiens , and other human-model species such as Rattus norvegicus , Caenorhabditis elegans and Drosophila melanogaster , among others. Statistical tests (hypergeometric distribution test) are performed to estimate enriched target genes for non-coding RNAs defined by the user, and visualization tools allows to easily analyze the results. In conclusion, CORALIS allows identifying enriched target genes given a list of non-coding RNAs. CORALIS is freely accessible at https://github.com/Daniel-VM/CORALIS.