Browser-based rRNA, tRNA, and ncRNA annotation — no installation required
barrnapx is a client-side reimplementation of barrnap that runs entirely in your browser using minimap2 compiled to WebAssembly via Aioli / biowasm. Upload a FASTA genome and download a GFF3 annotation file — no data ever leaves your machine.
- Detects rRNA, tRNA, and ncRNA in bacterial, archaeal, and fungal genomes
- Runs entirely in the browser — no server, no installation, no data upload
- Outputs standard GFF3 format compatible with genome browsers and downstream tools
- Legacy mode restricts analysis to rRNA only, mirroring barrnap < 1.0 behaviour
| Kingdom | Flag | rRNA detected |
|---|---|---|
| Bacteria | bac |
5S, 16S, 23S |
| Archaea | arc |
5S, 16S, 23S |
| Fungi | fun |
5S, 5.8S, 18S, 28S |
Visit https://barrnapx.vercel.app, upload one or more FASTA files, select a kingdom, and click Run.
The GFF3 output can be downloaded directly from the results panel.
##gff-version 3
##source-version barrnapx 0.1.0
##input-file genome.fna
##date 2025-01-01
contig1 barrnapx rRNA 1234 2756 99.2 + 0 ID=16S_rRNA_contig1_1234;Name=16S_rRNA;product=16S ribosomal RNA
contig1 barrnapx tRNA 345 417 85.1 - 0 ID=tRNA-Gly_contig1_345;Name=tRNA-Gly;product=tRNA-Gly transfer RNA
| Feature | Minimum identity |
|---|---|
| rRNA | 75% |
| tRNA | 70% |
| ncRNA | 65% |
Overlapping features on the same contig and strand are deduplicated, keeping the highest-scoring hit.
- The input FASTA is parsed in-browser and mounted into a virtual filesystem
- Kingdom-appropriate reference sequences are fetched from the app's static assets
- minimap2 2.22 (WebAssembly) aligns references against the genome
- PAF output is parsed, filtered by identity, deduplicated, and serialised to GFF3
minimap2 parameters by feature type:
| Feature | Parameters |
|---|---|
| rRNA | -k 14 -w 4 -N 50 |
| tRNA | -k 8 -w 2 -N 50 |
| ncRNA | -k 10 -w 3 -N 50 |
npm install
npm run dev # start dev server at http://localhost:5173
npm run test # run tests
npm run check # tests + lint + build (full CI gate)barrnapx is inspired by barrnap by Torsten Seemann. The WebAssembly runtime is provided by biowasm. Reference sequences are derived from SILVA and Rfam.
GPL-3.0 © Nabil-Fareed Alikhan