Identifying RNA editing sites using RNA sequencing data alone

Highly accurate and sensitive predictions of RNA editing sites can be obtained using RNA sequencing data from multiple individuals or species, without relying on matched genomic DNA sequence. Reanalyzing existing RNA sequencing data in this way greatly expands the catalog of human protein recoding events. We show that RNA editing sites can be called with high confidence using RNA sequencing data from multiple samples across either individuals or species, without the need for matched genomic DNA sequence. We identified many previously unidentified editing sites in both humans and Drosophila; our results nearly double the known number of human protein recoding events. We also found that human genes harboring conserved editing sites within Alu repeats are enriched for neuronal functions.