Virulence Searcher: a tool for searching raw genome sequences from bacterial genomes for putative virulence factors.

There is often a delay between completion of a genome sequence and its publication, mainly because of the lengthy process of annotation. For most researchers, the raw sequence alone does not easily yield the rich information it contains. An online tool (Virulence Searcher) has been designed that enables scientists interested in bacterial pathogenesis to search sequences from unannotated bacterial genomes for putative genes encoding virulence factors. This will facilitate an immediate start on important research into bacterial disease without having to wait for the annotated sequence to be published.