What's Ultranet?

Ultranet is a multiplatform software written in Java. It is designed to be an helpful tool for the analysis genomic data, or in general of any type of data that can be represented as a vector of features. The results is a ultrametric networks the represents the relationships between your data. For example, this software allows to study the SNPs of a set different people to determine how they are related. Many other applications can be found among biological studies, and for each of them the resulting network will assume different meaning.

BUGS REPORT: write down a brief description of the bug and attach a screenshot if possible, then mail to Matteo Comin or Enrico Guariento. Any help is welcome.

Possible applications

Ultranet can be used in a variety of different situations, just providing the appropriate data as input. In biology the following applications can be seen:

1. -It might be interesting finding a relationship between a group of individuals from different populations to determine if they shared an ancestor in the past.
   

2. -An interesting analysis to understand the history of families is the Y-STRs analysis, which are genetic markers belonging only to males subjects and moving on from father to son through the generations; this makes them very useful for the study of surnames.
   

3. -Another example can be found when analyzing the causes of diseases. In this case the SNPs genetic markers are used for comparing healthy individuals with others sick, in the hope to discover what is the genetic marker that with highest probability causes a specific pathology.
   

Getting start

The first thing to do is to download the Ultranet-Installer; make sure to download the right file, according to the system platform of the destination computer. In case of troubles, the documentation contains information that could be helpful.

Reference

A. Apostolico, M. Comin, A. Dress, L. Parida,
"Ultrametric Networks: A New Tool For Phylogenetic Analysis",
to appear...