Phylogenetic Analysis of Poxviridae Genomes Using K-mer Approach
Tatyana Nepomnyashchikh1, Denis Antonets2, Tatyana Tregubchak3, Alexander Shvalov4, Elena Gavrilova5, Rinat Maksyutov6
1SRC VB “Vector” Rospotrebnadzor, Koltsovo, Russia, nepom@vector.nsc.ru
2SRC VB “Vector” Rospotrebnadzor, Koltsovo, Russia, antonec@yandex.ru
3SRC VB “Vector” Rospotrebnadzor, Koltsovo, Russia, tregubchak_tv@vector.nsc.ru
4SRC VB “Vector” Rospotrebnadzor, Koltsovo, Russia, shvalov_an@vector.nsc.ru
5SRC VB “Vector” Rospotrebnadzor, Koltsovo, Russia, gavrilova_ev@vector.nsc.ru
6SRC VB “Vector” Rospotrebnadzor, Koltsovo, Russia, maksyutov_ra@vector.nsc.ru
Abstract There is a growing interest towards alignment-free approaches that use k-mers as genomic features. Large sizes of poxvirus genomes, their complex organization with repetitive regions and recombination sites, makes it difficult to produce accurate whole genome alignments especially for distantly related species. K-mer based trees built for 663 whole genome sequences were found to be in good agreement with alignment-based ones and correspond well to currently accepted taxonomy and evolution of poxviruses.