Sensommatic

Sensommatic implements BLAST and AUGUSTUS to mine and predict sensory receptor genes from whole genome assemblies, adopting a one-to-many gene mapping approach to overcome limitations of reference-based annotation tools.

Key Features:

• Automated Sensory Receptor Annotation: Sensommatic automates the mining and prediction of sensory receptor genes without reliance on existing annotations.
• One-to-Many Gene Mapping: The pipeline adopts a one-to-many gene mapping approach to account for species-specific gene family expansions and losses.
• Cross-Taxonomic Scalability: While designed for vertebrates, Sensommatic can be extended to non-vertebrate species by generating customized reference files.
• Reference-Independent Prediction: The pipeline overcomes limitations of conventional reference-based annotation tools that often underestimate sensory receptor counts due to species-specific gene family evolution.

Scientific Applications:

• Vertebrate Sensory Receptor Annotation: Sensommatic enables annotation of sensory receptor gene families across vertebrate species with reference-quality genomes.
• Comparative Genomics of Sensory Receptor Evolution: The pipeline facilitates study of extensive expansion and loss of sensory receptor gene families across vertebrate evolution.
• Non-Vertebrate Sensory Receptor Mining: Customized reference files allow extension of Sensommatic to sensory receptor annotation in non-vertebrate species.
• Large-Scale Genome Annotation: Sensommatic addresses the gap in annotation for the approximately 70% of vertebrate species on the NCBI database that lack gene annotations.

Methodology:

Sensommatic utilizes BLAST and AUGUSTUS to mine and predict sensory receptor genes from whole genome assemblies, adopting a one-to-many gene mapping approach.