High-throughput design of bacterial anti-sense RNAs using CAREng. Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • SUMMARY: Short RNA (sRNA) modulation of gene expression is an increasingly popular tool for bacterial functional genomics. Antisense pairing between an sRNA and a target messenger RNA results in post-transcriptional down-regulation of a specific gene and can thus be used both for investigating individual gene function and for large-scale genetic screens. sRNAs have several advantages over knockout libraries in studies of gene function, including inducibility, the capacity to interrogate essential genes and easy portability to multiple genetic backgrounds. High-throughput, systematic design of antisense RNAs will increase the efficiency and repeatability of sRNA screens. To this end, we present CAREng, the Computer-Automated sRNA Engineer. CAREng designs antisense RNAs for all coding sequences in a given genome, while checking for potential off-targets. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: CAREng is available as a Python script and through a web portal (https://caren.carleton.ca). SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics Advances online.

published proceedings

  • Bioinform Adv

altmetric score

  • 0.5

author list (cited authors)

  • Romero, J., Islam, M. T., Taylor, R., Grayson, C., Schoenrock, A., & Wong, A.

citation count

  • 1

editor list (cited editors)

  • Zhang, Z.

publication date

  • January 2022