Statement of Need

SeroTools addresses multiple critical needs for the efficient analysis of Salmonella serotyping data within the public health community. In recent years, significant technological advances have resulted in a wide range of molecular-based subtyping options, including highly sensitive approaches based on whole genome sequencing which are being adopted by public health agencies for quality control and as an alternative to serological testing. In light of the growing interest in in silico serovar prediction and serotyping method-comparison studies, SeroTools provides unique tools which fill multiple gaps in the analysis process. It serves as the only multiformat White-Kauffmann-Le Minor (WKL) repository accessible for software development. SeroTools also provides the only existing tools for querying the WKL scheme, comparing serovars for congruence, and predicting the most abundant serovar for clusters of isolates.