MGAviewer: A desktop visualization tool for analysis of metagenomics alignment data

Abstract

Numerous metagenomics projects have produced tremendous amounts of sequencing data. Aligning these sequences to reference genomes is an essential analysis in metagenomics studies. Large-scale alignment data call for intuitive and efficient visualization tool. However, current tools such as various genome browsers are highly specialized to handle intraspecies mapping results. They are not suitable for alignment data in metagenomics, which are often interspecies alignments. We have developed a web browser-based desktop application for interactively visualizing alignment data of metagenomic sequences. This viewer is easy to use on all computer systems with modern web browsers and requires no software installation. © The Author(s) 2012. Published by Oxford University Press.