PowerCore: a program applying the advanced M strategy with a heuristic search for establishing core sets.
BACKGROUND
Core sets are necessary to ensure that access to useful alleles or characteristics retained in genebanks is guaranteed. We have successfully developed a computational tool named 'PowerCore' that aims to support the development of core sets by reducing the redundancy of useful alleles and thus enhancing their richness.


RESULTS
The program, using a new approach completely different from any other previous methodologies, selects entries of core sets by the advanced M (maximization) strategy implemented through a modified heuristic algorithm. The developed core set has been validated to retain all characteristics for qualitative traits and all classes for quantitative ones. PowerCore effectively selected the accessions with higher diversity representing the entire coverage of variables and gave a 100% reproducible list of entries whenever repeated.


BACKGROUND
PowerCore software uses the .NET Framework Version 1.1 environment which is freely available for the MS Windows platform. The files can be downloaded from http://genebank.rda.go.kr/powercore/. The distribution of the package includes executable programs, sample data and a user manual.
Kim
Kyu-Won
KW
National Institute of Agricultural Biotechnology, 247 Seodun-dong, Suwon, 441-707, R.Korea.
Chung
Hun-Ki
HK
Cho
Gyu-Taek
GT
Ma
Kyung-Ho
KH
Chandrabalan
Dorothy
D
Gwag
Jae-Gyun
JG
Kim
Tae-San
TS
Cho
Eun-Gi
EG
Park
Yong-Jin
YJ
D000465:Algorithms; D001483:Base Sequence; D005787:Gene Frequency / Q000235:genetics*; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D040641:Quantitative Trait Loci / Q000235:genetics*; D016415:Sequence Alignment / Q000379:methods*; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA / Q000379:methods*; D012984:Software