Sheppard, B. D.; Behnken, B.; Steinbrenner, A.

Gene family functional exploration often requires analyzing motifs, domains, and associated datasets (e.g. gene expression) in the phylogenetic context of a gene tree. As genomic resources become more abundant, local pipelines are needed to analyze gene families of interest with project-specific resources. Here we present BLAST-Align-Tree (BAT), a bioinformatic pipeline for automated gene family phylogeny construction and annotation to enable gene tree exploration. BAT combines a BLAST search of local genome databases with a robust and flexible gene tree construction pipeline that enables multiple modes of annotation. Output visualizations display experimental datasets, custom regex specified amino acid motifs, and protein HMM domain annotations. For flexibility, BAT runs locally and is independent of pre-existing databases, allowing the easy incorporation of custom genomes and datasets. Three primary case studies described here demonstrate the utility of BAT for inferring the function of homologs and orthologs within characterized gene families. BAT is suitable for fine scale phylogenomic analysis of gene families across the tree of life, and default genomes available on installation span model eukaryotes.