Section: Software

The FASTRUCT software

Participant : Florence Forbes.

Joint work with: Francois, O. (TimB, TIMC) and Chen, C. (former Post-doctoral fellow in Mistis).

The FASTRUCT program is dedicated to the modelling and inference of population structure from genetic data. Bayesian model-based clustering programs have gained increased popularity in studies of population structure since the publication of the software STRUCTURE [65] . These programs are generally acknowledged as performing well, but their running-time may be prohibitive. FASTRUCT is a non-Bayesian implementation of the classical model with no-admixture uncorrelated allele frequencies. This new program relies on the Expectation-Maximization principle, and produces assignment rivaling other model-based clustering programs. In addition, it can be several-fold faster than Bayesian implementations. The software consists of a command-line engine, which is suitable for batch-analysis of data, and a MS Windows graphical interface, which is convenient for exploring data.

It is written for Windows OS and contains a detailed user's guide. It is available at http://mistis.inrialpes.fr/realisations.html .

The functionalities are further described in the related publication:

• Molecular Ecology Notes 2006 [55] .