Hole, D. T.; Abdalla, A.; Zubach, V.; Pratt, M.; Van Driel, S.; Ashfaq, S.; Hiebert, J.; Duggan, A. T.

Although vaccine-preventable, measles virus (MeV) continues to pose a significant public health challenge, with a substantial resurgence of cases worldwide. As whole-genome sequencing (WGS) becomes increasingly affordable and routinely adopted in public health laboratories, reliable and accessible analysis of next-generation sequencing (NGS) data is critical for outbreak investigation and molecular surveillance. Here, we present MeaSeq, a fast, user-friendly, open-source bioinformatics pipeline for MeV analysis using Illumina or Oxford Nanopore Technologies (ONT) NGS data. MeaSeq performs quality control assessments, consensus genome assembly and variant detection, optional genotype-specific reference selection, Distinct Sequence Identifier (DSId) assignment via user-provided databases or hashing, sub-consensus variant visualization, genome quality assessment, and standardized HTML reporting. We compared the performance of MeaSeq on NGS data generated from multiple sequencing platforms and targeted enrichment strategies against gold-standard Sanger data, reference genomes, and publicly available comparative data. This validation demonstrates that MeaSeq provides an accurate, reproducible, and accessible solution for routine MeV WGS analysis, supporting genomic surveillance and outbreak response workflows in public health and research settings.