25Minimum Spanning Trees
Minimum Spanning Trees
The Minimum Spanning Tree (MST) algorithm allows short-term divergence and micro-evolution in populations to be reconstructed based upon sampled data. The MST technique as implemented in the BioNumerics software is an excellent tool for analyzing genetic subtyping data such as derived from MLST, MLVA and other allele-comparison techniques.
The MST interface offers great interaction with the database and other techniques and is the ideal platform for plotting epidemic divergence against other factors such as geographical distribution, date of sampling, serotypes, etc.
Required modules:
Tree and Network Inference module
Relevant applications:
Multi-Locus VNTR Analysis (MLVA)
Multilocus sequence typing (MLST) analysis
Mycobacterial Interspersed Repetitive Units (MIRU) typing
Sequence typing of polymorphic VNTR's
