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Updated: Feb 14, 2026

Creating and Applying a Reference to Facilitate the Discussion and Classification of Proteins in a Diverse Group
Published on: August 16, 2017
ViCTree: an automated framework for taxonomic classification from protein sequences
Sejal Modha1, Anil S Thanki2, Susan F Cotmore3
1MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, Glasgow, UK.
Motivation:
The increasing rate of submission of genetic sequences into public databases is providing a growing resource for classifying the organisms that these sequences represent. To aid viral classification, we have developed ViCTree, which automatically integrates the relevant sets of sequences in NCBI GenBank and transforms them into an interactive maximum likelihood phylogenetic tree that can be updated automatically. ViCTree incorporates ViCTreeView, which is a JavaScript-based visualization tool that enables the tree to be explored interactively in the context of pairwise distance data.
Results:
To demonstrate utility, ViCTree was applied to subfamily Densovirinae of family Parvoviridae. This led to the identification of six new species of insect virus.
Availability And Implementation:
ViCTree is open-source and can be run on any Linux- or Unix-based computer or cluster. A tutorial, the documentation and the source code are available under a GPL3 license, and can be accessed at http://bioinformatics.cvr.ac.uk/victree_web/.
Supplementary Information:
Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
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