Starting your own NG-MAST study?

The NG-MAST website provides the official assignment of the allele numbers for por and tbpB sequences and assigns official ST numbers to each unique two-digit allelic profile (see further information).

The site also provides the official list of all known STs and their two-digit allelic profiles, but it does not provide a strain database.

We do, however, provide a facility for those who wish to maintain their own strain databases - e.g. to study the strains of N. gonorrhoeae circulating in their local region and to allow clusters of identical isolates to be recognised.

Additionally, we can provide groups of laboratories who wish to share their NG-MAST typing data the option of maintaining their own private databases, but to give permission to their collaborators to see and jointly analyse their strain data.

In all cases these private strain databases link to the official depository of alleles and STs at this website, so that official assignments of new alleles and STs of strains within the private databases can be made.

New features will soon be introduced for those wishing to use a private strain database to facilitate the recognition of clusters of indistinguishable gonococcal isolates within user-defined time frames and to evaluate their statistical significance based on the allele frequencies within the local database.

Please contact David Aanensen for further details.