TAfinder: a web-based tool to identify Type II toxin-antitoxin loci in bacterial genome
Toxin-antitoxin (TA) system, widely disseminated in bacteria and archaea, is a set of genes encoding a pair of proteins. The protein pair is composed of stable toxin and relatively unstable antitoxin that could inhibit toxin. TA systems have been classified into five types according to the molecular nature of the antitoxin and how it neutralize the toxin. In type II TA system, both the antitoxin and toxin are proteins and the neutralization is performed by forming a toxin-antitoxin complex. It shows that TA systems are related to the formation of persistence cells, stress resistance, regulation of biofilm formation, programmed cell death and other biological process. Due to its contribution to genetic elements maintenance, TA systems could be extensively applied in genetic manipulation. Thus it has become one of the research focuses in synthetic biology, in recent years. The TAfinder web server was designed to quickly predict and compare type II TA loci in newly sequenced bacterial genomes. It combines a homologous search module and an operon detection module to enhance the prediction performance. TAfinder is free and open to all academic users. |
Current version: 2.0
Since Dec., 2013; Updated: Oct., 2017 Recommended Browsers: Google Chrome |