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Updated: May 29, 2026

Heuristic Mining of Hierarchical Genotypes and Accessory Genome Loci in Bacterial Populations
Published on: December 7, 2021
The Gene Taxonomic Prevalence (GeTPrev) Pipeline for Scalable Gene Prevalence Estimation Across Bacterial Taxa
Weifan Wu1, Aaron M Dickey2, Jessie L Vipham3
1United States Meat Animal Research Center, United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, 844 Road 313, Clay Center, NE 68933, United States of America; Department of Animal Sciences and Industry, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS 66506, United States of America; Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611, United States of America.
Abstract:
The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) stores over 1 million bacterial genome sequences, with no tools capable of estimating the prevalence of specific nucleotide sequences within or across taxa. To address this gap, we developed the Gene Taxonomic Prevalence (GeTPrev) pipeline. GeTPrev estimates the presence of user-specified genes in bacterial genome collections across taxa. Implemented in Bash, GeTPrev integrates BLAST-based sequence alignment with two operational modes tailored to different analytical needs. The default mode performs a one-pass search against curated complete genome databases formatted for BLAST. A "Heavy" mode expands the search to include both complete and draft genomes for a broader representation of genomic diversity. GeTPrev is managed through a Conda environment and designed for compatibility with high-performance computing (HPC) systems, enabling efficient batch analysis of large genome datasets. GeTPrev supports the construction of user-defined gene taxonomic targets. However, prebuilt complete genome databases of seven Enterobacteriaceae genera are included with the pipeline to support rapid analysis. GeTPrev functionality and flexibility were demonstrated by nine example applications. GeTPrev offers a practical solution for gene-centric analysis in microbial genomics, molecular epidemiology, and food safety surveillance.
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