riboviz: software for analysis and visualization of ribosome profiling datasets

Ribosome profiling provides a detailed global snapshot of protein synthesis in a cell. At its core, this technique makes use of the observation that a translating ribosome protects around 30 nucleotides of the mRNA from nuclease activity. High-throughput sequencing of these ribosome protected fragments (called ribosome footprints) offers a precise record of the number and location of the ribosomes at the time at which translation is stopped. Mapping the position of the ribosome protected fragments indicates the translated regions within the transcriptome. Moreover, ribosomes spend different periods of time at different positions, leading to variation in the footprint density along the mRNA transcript. This provides an estimate of how much protein is being produced from each mRNA. Importantly, ribosome profiling is as precise and detailed as RNA sequencing. Even in a short time, since its introduction in 2009, ribosome profiling has been playing a key role in driving biological discovery.

We have developed this bioinformatics toolkit, **RiboViz**, for analyzing ribosome profiling datasets. **RiboViz** consists of a comprehensive and flexible analysis pipeline. The current version of **RiboViz** is designed for yeast datasets.