Predicting Functional Associations using Flanking Genes (FlaGs)

Abstract

Analysis of conservation of gene neighbourhoods over different evolutionary levels is important for understanding operon and gene cluster evolution, and predicting functional associations. Our tool FlaGs (Flanking Genes) takes a list of NCBI protein accessions as in input, clusters neighbourhood-encoded proteins into homologous groups using sensitive sequence searching, and outputs a graphical visualization of the gene neighbourhood and its conservation, along with a phylogenetic tree annotated with flanking gene conservation. FlaGs has demonstrated utility for molecular evolutionary analysis, having uncovered a new toxin-antitoxin system in prokaryotes and bacteriophages. FlaGs can be downloaded from https://github.com/GCA-VH-lab/FlaGs or run at www.webflags.se.