viromeBrowser: A Shiny App for Browsing Virome Sequencing Analysis Results

Area of Science:

• Bioinformatics
• Virology
• Computational Biology

Background:

• Virome sequencing generates complex data, posing challenges for scientists lacking data science skills.
• Standard workflows produce contigs and annotations, requiring further analysis for comparative studies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an accessible tool, viromeBrowser, for exploring and analyzing virome sequencing data.
• To empower researchers without a data science background to perform common virome data analysis tasks.

Main Methods:

• Developed viromeBrowser using the R shiny framework in collaboration with end-users.
• Implemented interactive features for annotation filtering, multi-sample visualization, and sequence extraction.

Main Results:

• The application facilitates interactive filtering of annotations based on quality thresholds.
• Enables visualization and comparison of contig annotations across multiple samples using metadata.
• Allows users to easily extract specific viral sequences in FASTA format.

Conclusions:

• viromeBrowser democratizes virome data analysis, making it accessible to a broader scientific audience.
• The tool supports key steps in virome data exploration, comparison, and sequence retrieval.