MAJIQlopedia: an encyclopedia of RNA splicing variations in human tissues and cancer

Abstract

Abstract Quantification of RNA splicing variations based on RNA-Sequencing can reveal tissue- and disease-specific splicing patterns. To study such splicing variations, we introduce MAJIQlopedia, an encyclopedia of splicing variations that encompasses 86 human tissues and 41 cancer datasets. MAJIQlopedia reports annotated and unannotated splicing events for a total of 486 175 alternative splice junctions in normal tissues and 338 317 alternative splice junctions in cancer. This database, available at https://majiq.biociphers.org/majiqlopedia/, includes a user-friendly interface that provides graphical representations of junction usage quantification for each junction across all tissue or cancer types. To demonstrate case usage of MAJIQlopedia, we review splicing variations in genes WT1, MAPT and BIN1, which all have known tissue or cancer-specific splicing variations. We also use MAJIQlopedia to highlight novel splicing variations in FDX1 and MEGF9 in normal tissues, and we uncover a novel exon inclusion event in RPS6KA6 that only occurs in two cancer types. Users can download the database, request the addition of data to the webtool, or install a MAJIQlopedia server to integrate proprietary data. MAJIQlopedia can serve as a reference database for researchers seeking to understand what splicing variations exist in genes of interest, and those looking to understand tissue- or cancer-specific splice isoform usage.