GEnView: A gene-centric, phylogeny-based comparative genomics pipeline for bacterial genomes and plasmids

Abstract

Summary: Comparing genomic loci of a given bacterial gene across strains and species can provide insights into their evolution, including information on e.g. acquired mobility, the degree of conservation between different taxa or indications of horizontal gene transfer events. While thousands of bacterial genomes are available to date, there is no software that facilitates comparisons of individual gene loci for a large number of genomes. GEnView (Genetic Environment View) is a Python-based pipeline for the comparative analysis of gene-loci in a large number of bacterial genomes, providing users with automated, taxon-selective access to the >800.000 genomes and plasmids currently available in the NCBI Assembly and RefSeq databases, and is able to process local genomes that are not deposited at NCBI, enabling searches for genomic sequences and to analyze their genetic environments through the interactive visualization and extensive metadata files created by GEnView.