COTRANS: a program for cotransduction analysis

COTRANS is a program for analyzing cotransduction data. It calculates distances from pairwise cotransduction frequencies, computes crossovers required to obtain each observed recombinant class, and applies rules to draw conclusions about order. The rules are based on the correlation between the frequency of the classes and the number of required crossovers for each possible ordering compatible with the distance calculations. The procedure emulates a geneticist's stepwise analysis of the data by first calculating distances, then looking for obvious three-point ordering conclusions, and finally proceeding to a complete crossover analysis. It reports results from each step of the analysis and an overall conclusion. COTRANS provides significant gains in speed and convenience over hand analysis, particularly for multipoint crosses with several recombinant classes.