Genome Detective

Genome Detective offers intuitive Bio-Informatics applications for the analysis of microbial molecular sequence data.

We have published our first major application, Genome Detective Virus Tool: An Accurate, Fast and Automated System for Virus Identification from High-throughput next generation sequencing (NGS) data. Genome Detective Virus Tool accurately and quickly identifies, assembles and classifies all known viruses present in short read and long read that are produced by Illumina, Ion torrent and Oxford Nanopore sequencers.

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COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2

During the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, genomic epidemiological surveillance around the world became crucial to guide governmental policies and to monitor the emergence of new variants. From the beginning, Genome Detective has been contributing to SARS-CoV-2 genomic surveillance around the globe with our intuitive bioinformatics platform and genomic database.

Genome Detective accurately and quickly assembles viruses to characterize the mutations of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Professor Tulio de Oliveira, the director of the Centre for Epidemic Response & Innovation (CERI) (Stellenbosch, South Africa), started sampling SARS-CoV-2 genomes early in the pandemic for this purpose, and used Genome Detective to discover the Beta and Omicron variants. In addition to the groundbreaking work of professor Tulio de Oliveira in South Africa, many other laboratories throughout the world were enabled in this pandemic to analyze their genomic SARS-CoV-2 data using Genome Detective, by virtue of its ease of use.

The continuously updated Coronavirus typing tool of Genome Detective allows the identification of all the WHO SARS-CoV-2 Variants of Concern.

Why choose Genome Detective?

Analyzing Next-Generation-Sequence meta-genomic datasets is increasingly complex due to large data files, the need for large and regularly updated reference databases, and complex bioinformatics processing. Using Genome Detective, you can quickly and easily extract accurate, meaningful information from your sequence data.

Ease of use

Requires no software installation nor detailed bioinformatics knowledge.

Insightful reports

Alignment and coverage views provide visual confirmation of identified viruses.

Accurate

We use manually curated reference databases and advanced methods to obtain high specificity with high sensitivity.

Assembly

Using de novo assembly allows to type highly diverged viruses and results in (genome) sequences that can be further analyzed.

Subtyping

For several species, e.g. Human Immunodeficiency Virus 1, we work with the research community to create and maintain subtyping tools.

Example Reports

If you would like to see the output of our tool in more detail, take a look at our example reports.

SRR3458562 Metagenomic dataset with known synthetic mock virome and mock bacteriome sequences
ERR138007 Whole genome Norovirus amplicon dataset

Contact us for more information
or a personalised quotation

We offer

Our Genome Detective Virus Tool is available online, or as locally installed software. Online, we offer you the option to evaluate the virus tool for free, or to subscribe to our premium package for routine use. The functionality and computing resources for the evaluation version are limited, but the identification and classification algorithms are the same for both versions. You are welcome to use our on line version or to contact us to design an on-premise installation for your lab or research group.

	Evaluation version	Premium account
Identify, assemble and classify all known viruses	✓	✓
Virus subtyping tools	✓	✓
Detailed reports	✓	✓
Always up to date	✓	✓
Batch uploads		✓
Jobs are never queued		✓
Commercial use allowed		✓
No limit on storage space		✓
Access to API		✓