SnoBIRD: a tool to identify C/D box snoRNAs and refine their annotation across all eukaryotes.

ABSTRACT: Small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), a group of noncoding RNAs present amongst all eukaryotes, are most extensively characterized for their regulation of ribosome biogenesis and splicing. Despite their central roles, current snoRNA annotations remain incomplete. Several eukaryote genome annotations contain few or no snoRNAs, and none distinguish expressed snoRNAs from their pseudogenes-a recently characterized snoRNA subclass with distinct features and expression levels. To address this, we developed SnoBIRD, a BERT-based C/D box snoRNA predictor trained on snoRNAs spanning all eukaryote kingdoms. We show that SnoBIRD outperforms existing tools and is the only predictor capable of identifying snoRNA pseudogenes using biologically relevant signal. Applied on the fission yeast and human genomes,

SUBMITTER: Fafard-Couture E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12309372 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature