Nextstrain: a tool to analyze the molecular epidemiology of SARS-CoV-2

ABSTRACT

Worldwide concern about the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) as a global threat to public health is the reason for the exponential growth of phylogenetic analyses. The purpose of this review was to describe the mode of operation and advantages of the tool Nextstrain, as well as the sequencing of the SARS-CoV-2 virus worldwide. The interface of the Nextstrain page was used to show its functions and data visualization modes. These were downloaded from the website GISAID to show the number of SARS-CoV-2 sequencing processes performed so far. Nextstrain is an open code project created by bioinformatics biologists to make good use of the scientific and public health potential of data about genomes of pathogens. Nextstrain consists in a set of tools operating with unprocessed sequences (in FASTA format). Nextstrain performs a sequence alignment of the input data into a multiple sequence alignment based on fast Fourier transform. Its use is based on two software applications Augur and Auspice. Nextstrain is an efficient tool by which lay people may obtain epidemiological data in a simple manner. It may be used in the public health sector, since it shows real time data about epidemics and their geographic distribution. It may also be used to follow-up outbreaks, as is the case with COVID-19. © 2021, Centro Nacional de Informacion de Ciencias Medicas. All rights reserved.