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What is Loculus?

Loculus is a software package to power microbial genomial databases. Major features include:

  • Upload and storage of consensus sequences and metadata using a simple web interface or a web API
  • Flexible data preprocessing: Loculus comes with a Nextclade-based preprocessing pipeline that is able to align and translate sequences, but it is also easy to implement and plug-in your own pipeline using custom tools.
  • Powerful searches: Loculus provides a user-friendly interface to search and view sequences as well as an API to query the data using LAPIS in the backend.
  • Highly configurable: The list of metadata fields is fully configurable and Loculus supports both single- and multi-segmented genomes.

Loculus aims to be widely useful to groups who need to manage sequencing data. It can be used by small public health or research laboratories with a few members for storing their own, internal data as well as by international databases facilitating global pathogen sequence sharing.