AcrFinder: genome mining anti-CRISPR operons in prokaryotes and their viruses.

ABSTRACT: Anti-CRISPR (Acr) proteins encoded by (pro)phages/(pro)viruses have a great potential to enable a more controllable genome editing. However, genome mining new Acr proteins is challenging due to the lack of a conserved functional domain and the low sequence similarity among experimentally characterized Acr proteins. We introduce here AcrFinder, a web server (http://bcb.unl.edu/AcrFinder) that combines three well-accepted ideas used by previous experimental studies to pre-screen genomic data for Acr candidates. These ideas include homology search, guilt-by-association (GBA), and CRISPR-Cas self-targeting spacers. Compared to existing bioinformatics tools, AcrFinder has the following unique functions: (i) it is the first online server specifically mining genomes for Acr-Aca operons; (ii) it p

SUBMITTER: Yi H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7319584 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature