Repository of Antibiotic resistance Cassettes
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 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 suggests that a gene cassette should be present but a gene cassette is not found by Attacca.