Bioinformatics Approaches for Studying Untranslated Regions of mRNAs

Interactions between RNA-binding proteins and cis -acting elements in the 5′- and 3′-untranslated regions (UTRs) of transcripts are responsible for regulating essential biological activities, such as mRNA localization, mRNA turnover, and translation efficiency. This chapter introduces some of the publicly available free bioinformatics resources, including software tools and databases, which can be used for predicting, mapping, and characterizing regulatory motifs found in the eukaryotic mRNA-untranslated regions.