Analysis of Multi-Strain Pathogens – Species or Minor Genetic Variants?

Modern advances in genetic analysis have made it feasible to ascertain the variant type of a pathogen infecting a host. Classification of pathogen variant is commonly performed by clustering analysis of the observed genetic divergence between the variants. A natural question arises as to whether the genetically distinct variants are epidemiologically distinct. A broader question is whether the different variants constitute separate microbial species or represent minor variations of the same species. We developed new statistical methodologies for addressing these important issues, in the context of classifying genetically distinct variants of bartonella bacteria found in a rodent species based on marked capture-recapture trapping data of a rodent ∗Author for correspondence ([email protected])