Viral Instant Mutation Viewer: A Tool to Speed Up the Identification and Analysis of New SARS-CoV-2 Emerging Variants and Beyond

Viruses. 2023 Jul 26;15(8):1628. doi: 10.3390/v15081628.

Abstract

The appearance of genetic variants impacts vaccination efficiency and therapeutic options, generating a need to map and relate mutations observed in the proteome and the genome. We develop an user-friendly web service software (Viral Instant Mutation Viewer or VIMVer) which allows a direct identification of mutations in the genome and its counterpart in the viral proteome. Since its emergence in 2019, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, has generated an overwhelming amount of data while becoming one of the most studied viruses of the Nidovirales order. We originally developed this tool during the COVID pandemic; thus, for any SARS-CoV-2 nucleotide sequence, the web service gives a fast identification, mapping, and display of new mutations simultaneously at the nucleotide and amino acid level in comparison to a reference sequence (Wuhan-1). Furthermore, the lineage or the relative position to the known lineage of the variant of interest is available on the link to Phylogenetic Assignment of Named Global Outbreak LINeages (PANGOLIN COVID-19). The workflow presented here is available online. The source code is released under public license and can be easily adapted for further development to other viruses.

Keywords: Django; SARS-CoV-2; genomics; mutation; proteomics; software; variants; virus bioinformatics.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Animals
  • COVID-19*
  • Humans
  • Mutation
  • Pandemics
  • Pangolins
  • Phylogeny
  • Proteome
  • SARS-CoV-2* / genetics

Substances

  • Proteome

Supplementary concepts

  • SARS-CoV-2 variants

Grants and funding

This research was funded by Fondation de la Recherche Médicale (Aide aux équipes), and the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking (JU) under grant agreement No 101005077 (IMI-CARE).