SSE

Program Description

Genomics-based bioinformatics and evolutionary analysis are an increasingly important component of biology. Bioinformatic tools to organise and analyse the rapidly growing amount of nucleotide and amino acid sequence data in organisms ranging from viruses to eukaryotes. SSE provides an integrated environment where sequences can be aligned, annotated, classified and directly analysed by a number of built-in bioinformatic programs. SSE incorporates a sequence editor for the creation of sequence alignments, a process assisted by integrated CLUSTAL / MUSCLE alignment programs and automated removal of indels.

Sequences can be fully annotated, aligned and coding regions identified. Genes can be extracted using GenBank / EMBL annotations, gene boundaries marked and sequences classified into groups. The program provides access to analytical methods that compute diversity, nucleotide and dinucleotide composition, codon usage, recombination and RNA secondary structure. Methods for analysing sequence diversity include measures of divergence and evolutionary distances, identity plots to detect regions of nucleotide or amino acid homology, reconstruction of sequence changes, mono-, di- and higher order nucleotide compositional biases and codon usage.

Association Index calculations, GroupScans, Bootscanning and TreeOrder scans perform phylogenetic analyses that reconcile group membership with tree branching orders and provide powerful methods for examining segregation of alleles and detection of recombination events.

Folding energy scan, StructureDist. RNA secondary and tertiary structures play important roles in gene expression and RNA virus replication. For the latter, persistence of infection is additionally associated with pervasive RNA secondary structure throughout viral genomic RNA that modulates interactions with innate cell defences. SSE provides several programs to scan alignments for RNA secondary structure through folding energy thermodynamic calculations and phylogenetic methods (detection of co-variant changes, and structure conservation between divergent sequences). This includes larger scale visualisation methods for structure conservation in alignments of gene or virus genome sequences.

These analyses complement methods based on detection of sequence constraints, such as suppression of synonymous site variability.

For each program, results can be plotted in real time during analysis through an integrated graphics package, providing publication quality graphs. Results can be also directed to tabulated datafiles for import into spreadsheet or database programs for further analysis.

Published Description

Simmonds, P. (2012). SSE: A nucleotide and amino acid sequence analysis platform. BMC Research Notes (Epub Jan.20, 2012). For other references from the Simmonds group, please refer to PubMed.