SimMLST: simulation of multi-locus sequence typing data under a neutral model.

SUMMARY: Multi-locus sequence typing (MLST) is a widely used method of characterization of bacterial isolates. It has been applied to over 50,000 isolates in over 50 different species. Here, we present a coalescent method to jointly simulate MLST data and the clonal genealogy that gave rise to the sample. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION: SimMLST was implemented in C++ and Qt4 for the graphical user interface. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Source code and binaries for Windows and Linux are available from (http://go.warwick.ac.uk/SimMLST). A user guide and a technical description of the algorithm are provided with the program