Rapid phylogenomic analysis for viral surveillance and metagenomic profiling with Omni2Tree

Phylogenomic surveillance is limited not by sequencing throughput, but by the difficulty of converting heterogeneous raw data into reliable evolutionary inference, particularly for low-titer and contaminated viral field samples. Here we present Omni2Tree, an assembly-free framework that reconstructs viral phylogenies directly from raw sequencing reads and generates easily shareable interactive reports and genome-wide entropy profiles to identify diversification. In H5N1 benchmark analyses, Omni2Tree maintained accurate placement and topological stability even under low coverage, unlike assembly or reference based methods. Omni2Tree generated an annotated phylogeny for 64-sample H5N1 field surveillance dataset from the eastern USA in under 3 hours. Omni2Tree recovered known phylogenetic structure and key variability insights across 1,328 hepatitis C virus and 707 human cytomegalovirus datasets, and resolved co-infecting respiratory viruses in clinical metagenomic samples. By enabling direct analysis from raw reads, Omni2Tree supports faster, more portable, and more decentralized phylogenomic surveillance across outbreak, clinical, and resource-limited settings.

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Publication Details

Journal
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Published
2026-05-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.04.29.721707
Primary Topic
Cytomegalovirus and herpesvirus research
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Rapid phylogenomic analysis for viral surveillance and metagenomic profiling with Omni2Tree

Sina Majidian, Andrew S. Bowman, Nicole M. Nemeth, Rebecca L. Poulson et al.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
Cytomegalovirus and herpesvirus research
article

Rapid phylogenomic analysis for viral surveillance and metagenomic profiling with Omni2Tree

Sina Majidian, Andrew S. Bowman, Nicole M. Nemeth, Rebecca L. Poulson, Daniel Paiva Agustinho, Xinchang Zheng, Richard J Webby, Adrian Chalco, Fritz J Sedlazeck
article en

Abstract

Phylogenomic surveillance is limited not by sequencing throughput, but by the difficulty of converting heterogeneous raw data into reliable evolutionary inference, particularly for low-titer and contaminated viral field samples. Here we present Omni2Tree, an assembly-free framework that reconstructs viral phylogenies directly from raw sequencing reads and generates easily shareable interactive reports and genome-wide entropy profiles to identify diversification. In H5N1 benchmark analyses, Omni2Tree maintained accurate placement and topological stability even under low coverage, unlike assembly or reference based methods. Omni2Tree generated an annotated phylogeny for 64-sample H5N1 field surveillance dataset from the eastern USA in under 3 hours. Omni2Tree recovered known phylogenetic structure and key variability insights across 1,328 hepatitis C virus and 707 human cytomegalovirus datasets, and resolved co-infecting respiratory viruses in clinical metagenomic samples. By enabling direct analysis from raw reads, Omni2Tree supports faster, more portable, and more decentralized phylogenomic surveillance across outbreak, clinical, and resource-limited settings.

bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
St. Jude Children's Research Hospital (US), Johns Hopkins University (US), University of Georgia (US), Baylor College of Medicine (US), The Ohio State University (US), University of Baltimore (US)
National Institutes of Health
Openalex Percentile: Top 12%
Cytomegalovirus and herpesvirus research
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