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Updated: Aug 12, 2025

Identification of RNAs Engaged in Direct RNA-RNA Interaction with a Long Non-Coding RNA
Published on: July 9, 2021
High-throughput design of bacterial anti-sense RNAs using CAREng
Jazmin Romero1, Md Tanvir Islam1, Ryan Taylor1
1Research Computing Services, Carleton University, Ottawa K1S 5B6, Canada.
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.
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