Welcome to ComTAR

ComTAR allows users to analyze the variations of known miRNA targets during evolution and to predict previously unknown interactions by focusing on the conservation of the potential targeting.

Features

• Find potential miRNA targets Read more ▶

Allows the characterization of miRNA-target interactions in different plant species and the prediction of new candidates mainly based in the conservation of the miRNA-target pair with a relaxed number of mismatches.

• Find potential miRNA target families Read more ▶

Allows the prediction of new candidates of genes coding for proteins of the same family.

• Is this gene a potential miRNA target? Read more ▶

Allows users to introduce a particular Arabidopsis thaliana locus tag or Phytozome gene ID and comTAR identifies the species where this particular gene can be a miRNA target.

Advanced features

• Search your own sequences Read more ▶

Allows users to introduce their own sequence to search for potential miRNA targets. Sequence must be 18 nt long[?] 18 nt
As miRNA sequences can vary in different species, specially positions 1, 20 and 21, we used sequences 2-19 (18 nt) for the search. (positions 2–19).

Help

Comtar contains precomputed data for 22 conserved miRNAs where you can browse the results, and change the input parameters. By contrast, query your own sequences are time consuming and results will be delivered within 1 day.

Got any doubts? Check out the question mark[?] Help
When you hover the quesition mark with your mouse, the help is displayed next to each title!

Target search options

You can define several parameters for each search, such as the mismatch filter, the minimum free energy cutoff and the minimum number of species.

• Mismatch filter: only one mismatch is allowed between position 1 and 11 of the miRNA consensus sequence.
• The minimum free energy cutoff: We defined a target as predicted if its minimum free energy is below the chosen cutoff.
• The minimum number of species where the same tag is present for a particular miRNA.

Users of comTAR are requested to cite :

Chorostecki U, Palatnik JF. (2014). comTAR: a web tool for the prediction and characterization of conserved microRNA targets in plants. Bioinformatics. Jul 15;30(14):2066-7. doi: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btu147.

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