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Recombination is an important evolutionary force in bacteria, but it remains challenging to reconstruct the imports that occurred in the ancestry of a genomic sample. Here we present ClonalFrameML, which uses maximum likelihood inference to simultaneously detect recombination in bacterial genomes and account for it in phylogenetic reconstruction. ClonalFrameML can analyse hundreds of genomes in a matter of hours, and we demonstrate its usefulness on simulated and real datasets. We find evidence for recombination hotspots associated with mobile elements in Clostridium difficile ST6 and a previously undescribed 310kb chromosomal replacement in Staphylococcus aureus ST582. ClonalFrameML is freely available at http://clonalframeml.googlecode.com/.

Original publication

DOI

10.1371/journal.pcbi.1004041

Type

Journal article

Journal

PLoS Comput Biol

Publication Date

02/2015

Volume

11

Keywords

Clostridium difficile, Computer Simulation, Databases, Genetic, Evolution, Molecular, Genome, Bacterial, Genomics, Phylogeny, Recombination, Genetic, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Software, Staphylococcus aureus