RAC: Repository of Antibiotic resistance Cassettes
| Content | |
|---|---|
| Description | Database focused on the discovery and annotation of novel gene cassettes and other transposable elements. |
| Data types captured |
Gene Cassettes and Transposable elements |
| Organisms | Bacteria |
| Contact | |
| Primary citation | PMID 22140215 |
| Access | |
| Website | www2 |
| Miscellaneous | |
| Bookmarkable entities |
yes |
RAC otherwise known as Repository of Antibiotic resistance Cassettes is a database that uses the automatic Attacca annotation system in order to comprehensively annotate gene-cassettes and transposable elements in a stream-lined manner and to discover novel gene cassettes.Antibiotic resistance is often due to horizontal gene transfer, which allows resistance to arise through cell-to-cell interaction. This poses a major challenge in the field of antibiotic resistance. Hence, the creation of RAC which would provide researchers a comprehensive and unique tool for the endeavor of documenting resistance due to gene-cassettes and transposable elements. Attacca helps discover novel gene cassettes when any three of the following occurs as mentioned in Tsafnat et al, 2011:
- the Attacca discovery heuristics (19) identify a gap in a cassette array that could correspond to a novel cassette;
- a cassette encoding a potentially novel β-lactamase variant is detected; or
- the type of sequence submitted (e.g. isolated cassette) suggests that a gene cassette should be present but a gene cassette is not found by Attacca.
If any of these cases occur, the gene-cassette would be sent to review at the Centre for Infectious Diseases and Microbiology, University of Sydney for further examination.