RERconverge Bioinformatics Tool Updated with Faster Runtime and Enhanced Analysis Functions
Researchers have released an updated version of RERconverge, an R package used to identify genomic changes associated with convergent evolution across species. The update achieves runtime improvements of up to 28.6 times faster and adds new analytical methods for controlling outliers in phenotype-gene association testing. The improvements enable researchers to analyze larger genomic datasets more efficiently as more species' genetic data becomes available.
RERconverge is a computational tool that helps researchers investigate convergent evolution—the independent evolution of similar traits in different species—by testing associations between gene relative evolutionary rates (RERs) and convergent phenotypes. The updated version introduces significant performance enhancements through modifications to core pipeline functions, achieving speedups of up to 28.6-fold. Beyond performance gains, the update expands the association testing function with two new analytical methods for outlier control and provides a comprehensive summary of available statistical tests with guidance on their appropriate use cases. The code and documentation are publicly available on GitHub, making the tool accessible to the research community. These improvements address a critical need as genomic datasets for increasing numbers of species become available, enabling more comprehensive evolutionary analyses.
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- bioRxivCenter
RERconverge Update: Runtime Reduction and Analysis Function Overhaul
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