CovMutEx

The emergence of COVID-19 has been a turning point in global health. The genomic structure and mutation patterns of the causing SARS-CoV-2 have attracted great attention as part of efforts to discover quick remedies for the quickly spreading pandemic. The studies showed that the characteristics of the virus and its tendency to mutate rapidly have hindered vaccine development efforts. Therefore, computational tools capable of predicting and visualizing future COVID-19 mutations are essential. Many web-based tools that perform genome analysis and visualization have long been available. Some of these tools offer a wide range of features for genome analysis, and some offer services for visualizing mutations. However, none of these tools provide inference and visualization capabilities for future COVID-19 mutations. To address these limitations, we developed CovMutEx, a web-based tool that enables users to predict and visualize future virus mutations. CovMutEx offers two primary functions: (1) Generation of the mutation probability data by combining feature extraction on user-selected raw data and making predictions using this data, and (2) visualization and analysis of mutation likelihood at different genomic locations. CovMutEx enables users to explore "hotpoint" positions in the genome and identify protein regions that are more prone to mutation through interactive charts. Consequently, the tool intends to facilitate vaccine research by predicting potential future mutations. Moreover, CovMutEx also contributes to the field of genomic data visualization in the context of COVID-19. This repository contains the frontend and backend implementations of the CovMutEx tool.