IntroVerse: a comprehensive database of introns across human tissues

Abstract

Dysregulation of RNA splicing contributes to both rare and complex diseases. RNA-sequencing data from human tissues has shown that this process can be inaccurate, resulting in the presence of novel introns detected at low frequency across samples and within an individual. To enable the full spectrum of intron use to be explored, we have developed IntroVerse, which offers an extensive catalogue on the splicing of 332,571 annotated introns and a linked set of 4,679,474 novel junctions covering 32,669 different genes. This dataset has been generated through the analysis of 17,510 human control RNA samples from 54 tissues provided by the Genotype-Tissue Expression Consortium. IntroVerse has two unique features: (i) it provides a complete catalogue of novel junctions and (ii) each novel junction has been assigned to a specific annotated intron. This unique, hierarchical structure offers multiple uses, including the identification of novel transcripts from known genes and their tissue-specific usage, and the assessment of background splicing noise for introns thought to be mis-spliced in disease states. IntroVerse provides a user-friendly web interface and is freely available at https://rytenlab.com/browser/app/introverse.