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Aequatus: An open-source homology browser

Thanki, AS; Soranzo, N; Herrero, J; Haerty, W; Davey, RP; (2018) Aequatus: An open-source homology browser. Gigascience , 7 (11) , Article giy128. 10.1093/gigascience/giy128. Green open access

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Abstract

Background: Phylogenetic information inferred from the study of homologous genes helps us to understand the evolution of genes and gene families, including the identification of ancestral gene duplication events as well as regions under positive or purifying selection within lineages. Gene family and orthogroup characterisation enables the identification of syntenic blocks, which can then be visualised with various tools. Unfortunately, currently available tools display only an overview of syntenic regions as a whole, limited to the gene level, and none provide further details about structural changes within genes, such as the conservation of ancestral exon boundaries amongst multiple genomes. Findings: We present Aequatus, a standalone web-based tool that provides an in-depth view of gene structure across gene families, with various options to render and filter visualisations. It relies on pre-calculated alignment and gene feature information typically held in, but not limited to, the Ensembl Compara and Core databases. We also offer Aequatus.js, a reusable JavaScript module that fulfils the visualisation aspects of Aequatus, available within the Galaxy web platform as a visualisation plugin, which can be used to visualise gene trees generated by the GeneSeqToFamily workflow. Availability: Aequatus is an open-source tool freely available to download under the GNU General Public License v3.0 at https://github.com/TGAC/Aequatus. A demo server is available at http://aequatus.earlham.ac.uk/. A publicly available instance of the GeneSeqToFamily workflow to generate gene tree information and visualise it using Aequatus is available on the Galaxy EU server at https://usegalaxy.eu.

Type: Article
Title: Aequatus: An open-source homology browser
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1093/gigascience/giy128
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/giy128
Language: English
Additional information: This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Cancer Institute
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Medical Sciences > Cancer Institute > Research Department of Cancer Bio
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10062546
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