GRACY: a tool for analysing human cytomegalovirus sequence data

Salvatore Camiolo, Nicolás M Suárez, Antonia Chalka, Cristina Venturini, Judith Breuer, Andrew J Davison
2020 Virus Evolution  
Modern DNA sequencing has instituted a new era in human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) genomics. A key development has been the ability to determine the genome sequences of HCMV strains directly from clinical material. This involves the application of complex and often non-standardized bioinformatics approaches to analysing data of variable quality in a process that requires substantial manual intervention. To relieve this bottleneck, we have developed GRACy (Genome Reconstruction and Annotation of
more » ... megalovirus), an easy-to-use tookit for analysing HCMV sequence data. GRACy automates and integrates modules for read filtering, genotyping, genome assembly, genome annotation, variant analysis and data submission. These modules were tested extensively on simulated and experimental data and outperformed generic approaches. GRACy is written in Python and is embedded in a graphical user interface with all required dependencies installed by a single command. It runs on the Linux operating system, and is designed to allow the future implementation of a cross-platform version. GRACy is distributed under a GPL 3.0 license and is freely available at https://bioinformatics.cvr.ac.uk/software/ with the manual and a test dataset.
doi:10.1093/ve/veaa099 pmid:33505707 pmcid:PMC7816668 fatcat:xu7nf2rkujfwlfr77dxry5aqqi