targetHub: A programmable interface for miRNA-gene interactions

Motivation: With the expansion of high-throughput technologies, understanding different kinds of genome-level data is a common task. MicroRNA (miRNA) is increasingly profiled using high-throughput technologies (microarrays or next-generation sequencing). The downstream analysis of miRNA targets can be difficult. Although there are many databases and algorithms to predict miRNA targets, there are few tools to integrate miRNA-gene interaction data into high-throughput genomic analyses. Results:We present targetHub, a CouchDB database of miRNA-gene interactions. TargetHub provides a programmer-friendly interface to access miRNA targets. The Web site provides RESTful access to miRNA-gene interactions with an assortment of gene and miRNA identifiers. It can be a useful tool to integrate miRNA target interaction data directly into high-throughput bioinformatics analyses. Availability: TargetHub is available on the web at http://app1.bioinfor matics.mdanderson.org/tarhub/-design/basic/ index.html. Contact: coombes.3@osu.edu.