micropan: an R-package for microbial pan-genomics

BACKGROUND: A pan-genome is defined as the set of all unique gene families found in one or more strains of a prokaryotic species. Due to the extensive within-species diversity in the microbial world, the pan-genome is often many times larger than a single genome. Studies of pan-genomes have become popular due to the easy access to whole-genome sequence data for prokaryotes. A pan-genome study reveals species diversity and gene families that may be of special interest, e.g because of their role in bacterial survival or their ability to discriminate strains. RESULTS: We present an R package for the study of prokaryotic pan-genomes. The R computing environment harbors endless possibilities with respect to statistical analyses and graphics. External free software is used for the heavy computations involved, and the R package provides functions for building a computational pipeline. CONCLUSIONS: We demonstrate parts of the package on a data set for the gram positive bacterium Enterococcus faecalis. The package is free to download and install from The Comprehensive R Archive Network. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12859-015-0517-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.