XspecT and ClAssT
The 'Acinetobacter species Assignment Tool' (XspecT) and the integrated 'Clone-type Assinment Tool'(ClAssT) are both very fast and easy to use tools to taxonomically assign Acinetobacter Input-Data using Bloom Filters. XspecT performs a taxonomic assignment on the Acinetobacter Species-Level while ClAssT uses Strain-Typing to identify International-Clones of A.baumannii.
About Acinetobacter
The genus Acinetobacter is a ubiquitous and highly divers group of aerobic and gram-negative bacteria consisting of about 94 different species. They occour in many ecological niches such as soil, water and in animals. They are able to survive with limited amounts of nutrients on dry surfaces and transmiss in natural and medical environment.
The taxonomic assignment of Acinetobacter species is difficult for several reasons. One of them are high similarities between closely related species. Espacially those of the A. calcoaceticus-A. baumannii-complex (ACB-complex). 5 out of 6 species of the ACB-complex are pathogens that can cause nosocomial infections. Therefore it is important to taxonomically assign Acinetobacter genomes to the correct species.
{{ 'A.baumannii' }}
Acinetobacter baumannii is a bacterium that can cause nosocomial infections and build up multidrug resistance. Therefore, this organism can be a threat to patients with a weak immune system that are currently in a hospital environment.
There are 8 'International Clonetypes' of A.baumannii with different behaviour regarding virulence or epidemicity. A identification of the present Clonetype is needed to deal with the outbreak. Current methods, like the 'Multi Locus Sequence Typing (MLST)'-method, are very time consuming.
To identify a A.baumannii International Clone, we developed the 'Clone-type Assignment Tool (ClAssT)' that can use Sequence-Reads or a assembled genome as Input-data for a fast and accurate classification. The assembling process of sequence reads is also very time consuming, but with this tool it can be skipped. ClAssT only needs a few Sequence-Reads for a classification. To avoid a long upload of a huge file that contains those reads, this tool will read your input-file client-side and then sends the needed data to the server for further processing.