replacement for Arlequin

Question

[Fedster]

Hi All,

I have inherited some teaching material that would need students to use Arlequin. I understand Arlequin is not maintained anymore and enough students cannot install it or get it to run, so I'd like to move on to something else. Ideally something else that replicates exactly the same functionality as Arlequin (we have microsatellite data rather than SNPs for instance), provided it can be installed or built on Windows/Linux/MacOS. Replacing the test data with SNPs is not feasible at this time, so i would need a replacement that does deal with microsatellites.

[grant.hovhannisyan]

Arlequin is a very popular and mature software, are you sure that it can not be installed? It might be not very actively maintained now, but this is due to the fact that it has been developing and improving for many years.

[Fedster]

Students cannot run it on MacOS, and neither could I when I tested it on a Mac. Students are expected to use their own computers and thus this problem is a show stopper.

Answer 1

[Tm]

Try using GenAlEx (stands for Genetic Analysis in Excel). You can simply use this tool by enabling macros in Microsoft excel. I have used it for microsatellite data analysis and it worked perfectly fine in my case.

Answer 2

[Fedster]

Thanks, but I am trying to avoid excel (also, some students use Linux so they do not have it). Technically the students are 'bioinformatics students' so I do not need something with training wheels, just something that is guaranteed to work on modern operating systems.

[Tm]

Ok, then you can try Genepop. It work in windows, Macs as well as linux.