Nucleic Acids Research Advance Access originally published online on May 25, 2009
Nucleic Acids Research 2009 37(Web Server issue):W606-W611; doi:10.1093/nar/gkp288
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Nucleic Acids Research, 2009, Vol. 37, No. suppl_2 W606-W611
© 2009 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Articles |
Meningococcus genome informatics platform: a system for analyzing multilocus sequence typing data
1School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332 and 2Meningitis and Vaccine Preventable Diseases Branch, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, GA 30333, USA
*To whom correspondence should be addressed. Tel: +1 404 385 1264; Fax: +1 404 894 0519; Email: lskatz{at}gatech.edu
Correspondence may also be addressed to Leonard W. Mayer's. Tel: +1 404 639 2841; Fax: +1 404 639 4421; Email: lwm1{at}cdc.gov Correspondence may also be addressed to Leonard W. Mayer. +1 404 639 2841; lwm1{at}cdc.gov
Received January 30, 2009. Revised April 10, 2009. Accepted April 14, 2009.
The Meningococcus Genome Informatics Platform (MGIP) is a suite of computational tools for the analysis of multilocus sequence typing (MLST) data, at http://mgip.biology.gatech.edu. MLST is used to generate allelic profiles to characterize strains of Neisseria meningitidis, a major cause of bacterial meningitis worldwide. Neisseria meningitidis strains are characterized with MLST as specific sequence types (ST) and clonal complexes (CC) based on the DNA sequences at defined loci. These data are vital to molecular epidemiology studies of N. meningitidis, including outbreak investigations and population biology. MGIP analyzes DNA sequence trace files, returns individual allele calls and characterizes the STs and CCs. MGIP represents a substantial advance over existing software in several respects: (i) ease of use—MGIP is user friendly, intuitive and thoroughly documented; (ii) flexibility—because MGIP is a website, it is compatible with any computer with an internet connection, can be used from any geographic location, and there is no installation; (iii) speed—MGIP takes just over one minute to process a set of 96 trace files; and (iv) expandability—MGIP has the potential to expand to more loci than those used in MLST and even to other bacterial species.