M1CR0B1AL1Z3R-a user-friendly web server for the analysis of large-scale microbial genomics data

Nucleic Acids Res. 2019 Jul 2;47(W1):W88-W92. doi: 10.1093/nar/gkz423.

Abstract

Large-scale mining and analysis of bacterial datasets contribute to the comprehensive characterization of complex microbial dynamics within a microbiome and among different bacterial strains, e.g., during disease outbreaks. The study of large-scale bacterial evolutionary dynamics poses many challenges. These include data-mining steps, such as gene annotation, ortholog detection, sequence alignment and phylogeny reconstruction. These steps require the use of multiple bioinformatics tools and ad-hoc programming scripts, making the entire process cumbersome, tedious and error-prone due to manual handling. This motivated us to develop the M1CR0B1AL1Z3R web server, a 'one-stop shop' for conducting microbial genomics data analyses via a simple graphical user interface. Some of the features implemented in M1CR0B1AL1Z3R are: (i) extracting putative open reading frames and comparative genomics analysis of gene content; (ii) extracting orthologous sets and analyzing their size distribution; (iii) analyzing gene presence-absence patterns; (iv) reconstructing a phylogenetic tree based on the extracted orthologous set; (v) inferring GC-content variation among lineages. M1CR0B1AL1Z3R facilitates the mining and analysis of dozens of bacterial genomes using advanced techniques, with the click of a button. M1CR0B1AL1Z3R is freely available at https://microbializer.tau.ac.il/.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Computational Biology
  • Genome, Bacterial / genetics*
  • Genomics*
  • Internet
  • Phylogeny
  • Sequence Alignment / methods
  • Software*
  • User-Computer Interface