Distance Matrices

MicrobeTrace is capable of taking, as input, a form of Distance Matrix. In order to parse properly, this distance matrix must be of the following format:

,Node1,Node2,Node3...
Node1,0,#,#,...
Node2,#,0,#,...
Node3,#,#,0,...
...

Where Node1-3... represent the node identifiers, and # represents the distance metric between the nodes of that row and column.

Some things to note:

• The top-left cell is empty. It doesn't strictly need to be, but whatever it's contents are will be ignored.
• The distance matrix must be sorted such that the ith row of the ith column is reflexive.
• MicrobeTrace will export this type of Distance Matrix, if you'd like an example. It's also quick to load, so if you've parsed a large FASTA file and want to get to analysis more quickly next time, exporting a Distance Matrix is one way to accomplish that.