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Lookup NU author(s): Professor Nicholas JakubovicsORCiD
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).
Background Yersinia is a Gram-negative bacteria that includes serious pathogens such as the Yersinia pestis, which causes plague, Yersinia pseudotuberculosis, Yersinia enterocolitica. The remaining species are generally considered non-pathogenic to humans, although there is evidence that at least some of these species can cause occasional infections using distinct mechanisms from the more pathogenic species. With the advances in sequencing technologies, many genomes of Yersinia have been sequenced. However, there is currently no specialized platform to hold the rapidly-growing Yersinia genomic data and to provide analysis tools particularly for comparative analyses, which are required to provide improved insights into their biology, evolution and pathogenicity. Description To facilitate the ongoing and future research of Yersinia, especially those generally considered non-pathogenic species, a well-defined repository and analysis platform is needed to hold the Yersinia genomic data and analysis tools for the Yersinia research community. Hence, we have developed the YersiniaBase, a robust and user-friendly Yersinia resource and analysis platform for the analysis of Yersinia genomic data. YersiniaBase has a total of twelve species and 232 genome sequences, of which the majority are Yersinia pestis. In order to smooth the process of searching genomic data in a large database, we implemented an Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX)-based real-time searching system in YersiniaBase. Besides incorporating existing tools, which include JavaScript-based genome browser (JBrowse) and Basic Local Alignment Search Tool (BLAST), YersiniaBase also has in-house developed tools: (1) Pairwise Genome Comparison tool (PGC) for comparing two user-selected genomes; (2) Pathogenomics Profiling Tool (PathoProT) for comparative pathogenomics analysis of Yersinia genomes; (3) YersiniaTree for constructing phylogenetic tree of Yersinia. We ran analyses based on the tools and genomic data in YersiniaBase and the preliminary results showed differences in virulence genes found in Yersinia pestis and Yersinia pseudotuberculosis compared to other Yersinia species, and differences between Yersinia enterocolitica subsp. enterocolitica and Yersinia enterocolitica subsp. palearctica. Conclusions YersiniaBase offers free access to wide range of genomic data and analysis tools for the analysis of Yersinia. YersiniaBase can be accessed at http://yersinia.um.edu.my webcite.
Author(s): Tan SY, Dutta A, Jakubovics NS, Ang MY, Siow CC, Mutha NV, Heydari H, Wee WY, Wong GJ, Choo SW
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: BMC Bioinformatics
Year: 2015
Volume: 16
Online publication date: 16/01/2015
Acceptance date: 11/12/2014
Date deposited: 25/11/2015
ISSN (electronic): 1471-2105
Publisher: BioMed Central Ltd.
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12859-014-0422-y
DOI: 10.1186/s12859-014-0422-y
PubMed id: 25591325
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