Genome-wide CRISPRi screen in E. coli MG1655 using the EcoWG1 library

Gene silencing with dCas9 is quickly becoming a standard method to study and engineer bacteria, yet the design rules that determine on-target activity are still unknown. Taking advantage of high-throughput screening data, we fitted a model able to predict dCas9’s ability to block the RNA polymerase. Using this model we built a novel genome-wide library for E. coli MG1655, EcoWG1, and demonstrated its improved performance over published datasets.