Embodiments disclosed herein provide methods for identifying new CRISPR loci and effectors, as well as different CRISPR loci combinations found in various organisms. Class-II CRISPR systems contain single-gene effectors that have been engineered for transformative biological discovery and biomedical applications. Discovery of additional single-gene or multicomponent CRISPR effectors may enhance existing CRISPR applications, such as precision genome engineering. Comprehensive characterization of CRISPR-loci may identify novel functional roles of CRISPR loci enabling new tools for biomedicine and biological discovery. CRISPR loci have enormous feature complexity, but classification of CRISPR loci has been focused on a small fraction of highly abundant features. Increased genome sequencing has enhanced the sampling of this feature complexity.