Drosophila melanogaster recombination rate calculator

Recombination rate is a key evolutionary parameter that determines the degree to which sites are linked. Estimating recombination rates is thus of crucial importance for population genetic and molecular evolutionary studies. We present here a user-friendly web-based tool that can be used to retrieve recombination rate estimates for single and/or multiple loci in the Drosophila melanogaster genome given a user-defined choice of the genome release. We used the Marey map approach that is based on comparing the genetic and physical maps to infer recombination rates along the major chromosomes of the D.melanogaster genome. Our implementation of this approach is based on building third-order polynomials which are used to interpolate recombination rates at all points on the chromosome except for telomeric and centromeric regions in which such polynomials are known to provide particularly poor estimation.