mESAdb is a regularly updated database for the multivariate analysis of sequences and expression of microRNAs from multiple taxa. mESAdb is modular and has a user interface implemented in PHP and JavaScript and coupled with statistical analysis and visualization packages written for the R language. The database primarily comprises mature microRNA sequences and their target data, along with selected human, mouse and zebrafish expression datasets. mESAdb analysis modules allow a) mining of selected microRNA expression datasets for a list of microRNAs; and b) pair-wise multivariate analysis of expression datasets within and between taxa; and c) association of microRNA lists or microRNAs with a given motif with annotation databases, HUGE Navigator [1], KEGG [2], and GO [3]. The use of existing and customized R packages facilitates future addition of datasets and analysis tools. Furthermore, the ability to upload and analyze user-specified datasets makes mESAdb an interactive and expandable analysis tool for microRNA sequence and expression data.

References
[1] Khoury MJ and Dorman JS; The Human Genome Epidemiology Network. Am J Epidemiol . 1;148(1):1-3 (1998).
[2] Kanehisa M and Goto S; KEGG: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes. Nucleic Acids Res. 28, 27-30 (2000).
[3] The Gene Ontology Consortium; Gene ontology: tool for the unification of biology. Nat. Genet. 25(1):25-9 (2000).