There are abundance of transcripts that code for no particular protein and that remain functionally uncharacterized. Some of these transcripts may have novel functions while others might be junk transcripts. Unfortunately, the experimental validation of such transcripts to find functional non-coding RNA candidates is very costly. Therefore, our primary interest is to computationally mine candidate functional transcripts from a pool of uncharacterized transcripts. We introduce fRNAdb: a novel database service that hosts a large collection of non-coding transcripts including annotated/non-annotated sequences from the H-inv database, NONCODE and RNAdb. A set of computational analyses have been performed on the included sequences. These analyses include RNA secondary structure motif discovery, EST support evaluation, cis-regulatory element search, protein homology search, etc. fRNAdb provides an efficient interface to help users filter out particular transcripts under their own criteria to sort out functional RNA candidates. fRNAdb is available at

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Hypochlorous acid (HOCl), an inflammatory oxidant derived from neutrophil myeloperoxidase, can chlorinate cytosolic proteins and nuclear DNA bases of target cells by passing through the cell membrane. However, little is known about the consequences of HOCl-derived modification of cell membrane components, including phospholipids. In this study, we characterize the reaction of HOCl with phospholipid molecules and found that aminophospholipids are the key molecules that chemically regulate lipid peroxidation. Upon incubation with HOCl, the peroxidation of egg yolk phosphatidylcholine was significantly enhanced in the presence of phosphatidylethanolamine (PE). In contrast, the peroxidation was significantly inhibited in the presence of phosphatidylserine (PS). On the basis of mass spectrometric and electron paramagnetic resonance characterization, the initiator of the peroxidation was identified as the nitrogen-centered radical originating from PE-derived chloramines, especially N,N-dichlorinated PE, a major product in the HOCl-modified PE. Although PS was also chlorinated upon reaction with HOCl, the formed chloramine rapidly decomposed to phosphatidylglycolaldehyde, a novel class of lipid aldehyde. Formation of phosphatidylglycolaldehyde was also confirmed in the porcine brain PS and erythrocyte cell membrane ghost exposed to HOCl. These results provide a novel mechanism for the HOCl-induced oxidative damage and its endogenous protection in the cell membrane at the site of inflammation.