Using a fast clustering method for viral segment lineage determination, applied to the H9 influenza hemagglutinin

Lineage determination is an important part of the analysis of viral sequence data. Previously this has depended on phylogenetic analysis in order to identify distinct clades within the phylogenetic trees. This method is time consuming and dependent on a set of empirical rules for clade identification. An alternative approach is to use clustering. Clustering is commonly used to identify operational taxonomic units in next generation sequencing data. In this paper we use clustering in order to rapidly identify viral segment lineages and clades without the need for tree construction.