The focus of the Bioinformatics Lab (SMART – smallRNA Team, http://bioinfo.uni-plovdiv.bg/) at Dept. of Plant Physiology and Molecular biology is the development of new methods, algorithms and computational softwares for exploring and interpreting genomic data in a framework of automated sequence analysis. Our current emphasis is on the small RNAs (microRNAs and small interfering RNAs) in plants and animals. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a recently discovered class of non-coding RNAs that regulate gene and protein expression in plants and animals. Along with other sRNAs involved in epigenetics events they represent an important part of the gene regulation network.  The activities of SMART comprise analysis of small RNA libraries from deep-sequencing data, expression regulation profiling, discovery and annotation novel miRNA gene and their targets, as well as identification of stress-related small RNAs.
One of our goals is to provide comprehensive models and publically available computational tools integrating various levels of genomic data analysis of small RNAs.
Currently active projects of the SMART-lab group include:

• Identification of stress-related small RNAs and miRNAs in plants.
• Software development for discovery of novel miRNA genes in plant genomes.
• Cancer-related miRNAs and their target sites
• Promoter-associated small RNAs and methylation gene profile in plants.
• Computational tools for small RNA annotation and expression profiling.