# Bioinformatics for Inosine: Tools and Approaches to Trace This Elusive RNA Modification

## TL;DR

This paper reviews bioinformatics tools and methods for studying inosine, an RNA modification linked to important biological processes and diseases.

## Contribution

The paper provides a comprehensive review of bioinformatics approaches for detecting and analyzing inosine RNA modifications.

## Key findings

- ADAR-mediated RNA editing is evolutionarily conserved and biologically significant.
- High-throughput methods now allow for detailed analysis of RNA modifications.
- Bioinformatics pipelines are essential to fully utilize data from RNA modification studies.

## Abstract

Inosine is a nucleotide resulting from the deamination of adenosine in RNA. This chemical modification process, known as RNA editing, is typically mediated by a family of double-stranded RNA binding proteins named Adenosine Deaminase Acting on dsRNA (ADAR). While the presence of ADAR orthologs has been traced throughout the evolution of metazoans, the existence and extension of RNA editing have been characterized in a more limited number of animals so far. Undoubtedly, ADAR-mediated RNA editing plays a vital role in physiology, organismal development and disease, making the understanding of the evolutionary conservation of this phenomenon pivotal to a deep characterization of relevant biological processes. However, the lack of direct high-throughput methods to reveal RNA modifications at single nucleotide resolution limited an extended investigation of RNA editing. Nowadays, these methods have been developed, and appropriate bioinformatic pipelines are required to fully exploit this data, which can complement existing approaches to detect ADAR editing. Here, we review the current literature on the “bioinformatics for inosine” subject and we discuss future research avenues in the field.