Phage Commander, a software tool for rapid annotation of bacteriophage genomes using multiple programs

The number of sequenced phage genomes is growing at an exponential rate. The majority of newly sequenced phage genomes are annotated by one or more of several freely-available auto-annotation programs. No program has been shown to consistently outperform the others; thus the choice of which program to use is not obvious. We present the software Phage Commander for rapid annotation of phage genomes using multiple auto-annotation programs. Phage Commander runs a phage genome sequence through nine auto-annotation programs and integrates the results within a single output. Phage Commander generates properly formatted output files for direct export to NCBI GenBank. Users can select the threshold for determining which genes should be exported. Phage Commander was benchmarked using eight high-quality phage genomes whose genes have been identified through experiments. Results show that the best results are obtained by exporting genes identified by at least two or three of the nine auto-annotation programs.