Cenote-Taker 2 democratizes virus discovery and sequence annotation.

Area of Science:

• Virology
• Bioinformatics
• Genomics

Background:

• The vast majority of viral species remain undiscovered, limiting our understanding of biological systems.
• Many deposited viral sequences contain unannotated genes, hindering comprehensive analysis.
• Current tools for virus discovery and annotation have limitations in sensitivity and scope.

Purpose of the Study:

• To introduce Cenote-Taker 2, a novel tool for virus discovery and annotation.
• To enhance the identification of both known and divergent viral sequences.
• To provide more comprehensive gene annotation for viral contigs.

Main Methods:

• Cenote-Taker 2 utilizes sensitive models of hallmark viral genes for sequence discovery.
• It employs a flexible module system for automated annotation of contig sequence features.
• The tool offers command-line and graphical user interfaces with free high-performance computing access.

Main Results:

• Cenote-Taker 2 successfully discovers familiar and divergent viral sequences from user-input contigs.
• It provides more extensive gene information compared to existing tools.
• Outputs include interactive genome maps, virome summary tables, and GenBank-ready files.

Conclusions:

• Cenote-Taker 2 significantly facilitates virus discovery and annotation.
• The tool aids in expanding the known virome by improving gene identification.
• It is expected to accelerate research in virology and microbial genomics.