NONCODE (http://www.bioinfo.org/noncode/) is a systematic database that is dedicated to presenting the most complete collection and annotation of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), especially long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs). Since NONCODE 2016 was released two years ago, the amount of novel identified ncRNAs has been enlarged by the reduced cost of next-generation sequencing, which has produced an explosion of newly identified data. The third-generation sequencing revolution has also offered longer and more accurate annotations. Moreover, accumulating evidence confirmed by biological experiments has provided more comprehensive knowledge of lncRNA functions. The ncRNA data set was expanded by collecting newly identified ncRNAs from literature published over the past two years and integration of the latest versions of RefSeq and Ensembl. Additionally, pig was included in the database for the first time, bringing the total number of species to 17. The number of lncRNAs in NONCODEv5 increased from 527 336 to 548 640. NONCODEv5 also introduced three important new features: (i) human lncRNA–disease relationships and single nucleotide polymorphism-lncRNA–disease relationships were constructed; (ii) human exosome lncRNA expression profiles were displayed; (iii) the RNA secondary structures of NONCODE human transcripts were predicted. NONCODEv5 is also accessible through http://www.noncode.org/.

Small proteins is the general term for proteins with length shorter than 100 amino acids. Identification and functional studies of small proteins have advanced rapidly in recent years, and several studies have shown that small proteins play important roles in diverse functions including development, muscle contraction and DNA repair. Identification and characterization of previously unrecognized small proteins may contribute in important ways to cell biology and human health. Current databases are generally somewhat deficient in that they have either not collected small proteins systematically, or contain only predictions of small proteins in a limited number of tissues and species. Here, we present a specifically designed web-accessible database, small proteins database (SmProt, http://bioinfo.ibp.ac.cn/SmProt), which is a database documenting small proteins. The current release of SmProt incorporates 255 010 small proteins computationally or experimentally identified in 291 cell lines/tissues derived from eight popular species. The database provides a variety of data including basic information (sequence, location, gene name, organism, etc.) as well as specific information (experiment, function, disease type, etc.). To facilitate data extraction, SmProt supports multiple search options, including species, genome location, gene name and their aliases, cell lines/tissues, ORF type, gene type, PubMed ID and SmProt ID. SmProt also incorporates a service for the BLAST alignment search and provides a local UCSC Genome Browser. Additionally, SmProt defines a high-confidence set of small proteins and predicts the functions of the small proteins.

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