GA-TA: Genetics Application - Table Adapter

GAMBOA LERENA, M. M.; HOHL, D.M.; DEL PALACIO, S.; DI SANTO MEZTLER, G. P.; LÓPEZ ARMENGOL, F. G.

Buenos Aires (virtual)

Congreso; XLVIII Congreso Argentino de Genética; 2020

Sociedad Argentina de Genética

Several informatics tools have been developed for the analysis of genetic data, such as the very popular Arlequin, Structure, and R programs. A common issue for scientists working in the field of human population genetics is that it is not trivial to convert a simple layout experimental datasheet into the specific formats required by each of those programs. Lacking a tool to properly handle this, scientists are forced to perform this labour manually, which is highly time-consuming and prone to errors. The magnitude of this problem has escalated with the current use of large databases of human variation data as the 1000 Genomes Project. Here we introduce the GA-TA program designed to adapt tables from an easy-to-build format into the specific formats required by programs such as Structure, Arlequin, and R. We present a web application hosted at http://gata.fcaglp.unlp.edu.ar/ which provides an easy-to-use graphical user interface for managing input and output files, along with a user manual and a test sheet for clarification. No programming skills nor software installations are required to make use of this application. In addition, the GA-TA program is open-source and publicly available at https://github.com/GA-TA/. The software is written in Python 3 in a modular structure suitable for being easily extended to provide further formats and utilities.