CRISPRminer is a knowledge base for exploring CRISPR-Cas systems in microbe and phage interactions. (December 2018) - Zhang, Fan
Abstract CRISPR-Cas systems not only play key roles in prokaryotic acquired immunity, but can also be adapted as powerful genome editing tools. Understanding the native role of CRISPR-Cas systems in providing adaptive immunity can lead to new CRISPR-based technologies. Here, we develop CRISPRminer, a knowledge base and web server to comprehensively collect and investigate the knowledge of CRISPR-Cas systems and generate instructive annotations, including CRISPR arrays and Cas protein annotation, CRISPR-Cas system classification, self-targeting events detection, microbe–phage interaction inference, and anti-CRISPR annotation. CRISPRminer is user-friendly and freely available athttp://www.microbiome-bigdata.com/CRISPRminer . Fan Zhang et al. present CRISPRminer, a comprehensive database for exploring CRISPR-Cas systems in more than 3500 microbial species and a web-server for in-depth data mining. CRISPRminer allows researchers to predict CRISPR-Cas systems and investigate self-targeting CRISPRs, microbe-phage interaction networks, and anti-CRISPR features.