NGMASTER: in silico multi-antigen sequence typing for Neisseria gonorrhoeae

Abstract

Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) provides the highest resolution analysis for comparison of bacterial isolates in public health microbiology. However, although increasingly being used routinely for some pathogens such as <i>Listeria monocytogenes</i> and <i>Salmonella enterica</i>, the use of WGS is still limited for other organisms, such as <i>Neisseria gonorrhoeae</i>. Multi-antigen sequence typing (NG-MAST) is the most widely performed typing method for epidemiological surveillance of gonorrhoea. Here, we present <i>NGMASTER,</i> a command-line software tool for performing <i>in silico</i> NG-MAST on assembled genome data. <i>NGMASTER</i> rapidly and accurately determined the NG-MAST of 630 assembled genomes, facilitating comparisons between WGS and previously published gonorrhoea epidemiological studies. The source code and user documentation are available at https://github.com/MDU-PHL/ngmaster.