Related Experiment Video
Updated: Nov 24, 2025
Swab Sampling Method for the Detection of Human Norovirus on Surfaces
Published on: February 6, 2017
Human Calicivirus Typing tool: A web-based tool for genotyping human norovirus and sapovirus sequences
Roman L Tatusov1, Preeti Chhabra2, Marta Diez-Valcarce3
1Cherokee Nation Assurance, Arlington, VA, 22202, USA; Division of Viral Diseases, National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA, USA.
Background:
The family Caliciviridae consists of a genetically diverse group of RNA viruses that infect a wide range of host species including noroviruses and sapoviruses which cause acute gastroenteritis in humans. Typing of these viruses relies on sequence-based approaches, and therefore there is a need for rapid and accurate web-based typing tools.
Objective:
To develop and evaluate a web-based tool for rapid and accurate genotyping of noroviruses and sapoviruses.
Methods:
The Human Calicivirus Typing (HuCaT) tool uses a set of curated reference sequences that are compared to query sequences using a k-mer (DNA substring) based algorithm. Outputs include alignments and phylogenetic trees of the 12 top matching reference sequences for each query.
Results:
The HuCaT tool was validated with a set of 1310 norovirus and 239 sapovirus sequences covering all known human norovirus and sapovirus genotypes. HuCaT tool assigned genotypes to all queries with 100 % accuracy and was much faster (17 s) than BLAST (150 s) or phylogenetic analyses approaches.
Conclusions:
The web-based HuCaT tool supports rapid and accurate genotyping of human noroviruses and sapoviruses.
