What is "rfam"

Rfam is a database containing information about non-coding RNA (ncRNA) families and other structured RNA elements. It is an annotated, open access database originally developed at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in collaboration with Janelia Farm, and currently hosted at the European Bioinformatics Institute. Rfam is designed to be similar to the Pfam database for annotating protein families.

Unlike proteins, ncRNAs often have similar secondary structure without sharing much similarity in the primary sequence. Rfam divides ncRNAs into families based on evolution from a common ancestor. Producing multiple sequence alignments (MSA) of these families can provide insight into their structure and function, similar to the case of protein families. These MSAs become more useful with the addition of secondary structure information. Rfam researchers also contribute to Wikipedia's RNA WikiProject.