ATtRACT—a database of RNA-binding proteins and associated motifs

RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) play a crucial role in key cellular processes, including RNA transport, splicing, polyadenylation and stability. Understanding the interaction between RBPs and RNA is key to improve our knowledge of RNA processing, localization and regulation in a global manner. Despite advances in recent years, a unified non-redundant resource that includes information on experimentally validated motifs, RBPs and integrated tools to exploit this information is lacking. Here, we developed a database named ATtRACT (available at http://attract.cnic.es) that compiles information on 370 RBPs and 1583 RBP consensus binding motifs, 192 of which are not present in any other database. To populate ATtRACT we (i) extracted and hand-curated experimentally validated data from CISBP-RNA, SpliceAid–F, RBPDB databases, (ii) integrated and updated the unavailable ASD database and (iii) extracted information from Protein-RNA complexes present in Protein Data Bank database through computational analyses. ATtRACT provides also efficient algorithms to search a specific motif and scan one or more RNA sequences at a time. It also allows discovering de novo motifs enriched in a set of related sequences and compare them with the motifs included in the database. Database URL: http:// attract. cnic. e

A new species of Melampsora rust on Salix elbursensis from Iran

A rust fungus was found causing stem cankers on 1- to 5-year-old stems of Salix elbursensis in the north west of Iran. The rust also forms uredinia on leaves and flowers of the host willow. Light and scanning electron microscopy revealed that the new rust is morphologically distinct from several Melampsora species occurring on the willows taxonomically close to S. elbursensis, but indistinguishable from Melampsora larici-epitea. Examination of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region of the ribosomal DNA suggested that the rust fungus is phylogenetically close to Melampsora allii-populina and Melampsora pruinosae on Populus spp. Based on both the morphological characteristics and the ITS sequence data, the rust is described as a new species - Melampsora iranica sp. nov