tailfindr: Alignment-free poly(A) length measurement for Oxford Nanopore RNA and DNA sequencing

Maximilian Krause; Adnan M. Niazi; Kornel Labun; Yamila N. Torres Cleuren; Florian S. Müller; Eivind Valen

The existence of tailfindr makes it possible to design specific cDNA library preparation protocols that retain the full poly(A) tail in ONT sequencing approaches. This strategy has recently been shown to allow further insights into poly(A) tail regulation based on PacBio long-read sequencing [41] . ONT cDNA sequencing has the advantage to yield approximately 10x more data per library preparation compared to native RNA sequencing, and due to amplification would allow sequencing experiments starting with minute RNA amounts as input [34, 42] . Additionally, we envision . CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license peer-reviewed) is the author/funder. It is made available under a The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not . https://doi.org/10.1101/588343 doi: bioRxiv preprint that future cDNA applications that include Unique Molecular Identifiers (UMI) will make it possible to acquire multiple poly(A) tail measurements for each molecule, which will increase the fidelity of isoform-specific poly(A) tail measurements. Thus, using tailfindr with specific ONT cDNA applications offers new approaches to study the role of poly(A) tail lengths from scarce biological samples.