query_rnacentral

Text and metadata search over RNAcentral. Combines the EBI Search backend (for fast filtered lookup) with the RNAcentral REST API (for enriched per-hit metadata such as Rfam hits, GO annotations, and whether a 2D structure is available).

Use this when you have a name, keyword, or accession and want to find matching RNAs. Use search_sequence instead if you have a raw nucleotide sequence.

Arguments

Name	Type	Required	Description
query	str	yes	Free-text search term (e.g. "telomerase", "hsa-mir-126", "HOTAIR").
rna_type	str	no	Restrict to an RNA type — e.g. "miRNA", "lncRNA", "tRNA", "rRNA", "snoRNA".
taxon	str	no	Scientific name (preferred) or NCBI Taxonomy ID — e.g. "Homo sapiens" or "9606".
expert_db	str	no	Source database filter — e.g. "miRBase", "GENCODE", "Ensembl", "Rfam".
has_secondary_structure	bool	no	If true, only return RNAs that have a 2D structure available.
limit	int	no	Number of hits to return (1–20, default 10).

Returns

A markdown-formatted summary, one entry per hit, including the URS ID, description, RNA type, organism, length, source databases, and any Rfam/GO metadata that could be fetched.

Upstream services

• EBI Search (ebisearch.ebi.ac.uk) for the filtered text query.

• RNAcentral REST API (rnacentral.org/api/v1) for per-hit enrichment.