ANItools web: a web tool for fast genome comparison within multiple bacterial strains

Early classification of prokaryotes was based solely on phenotypic similarities, but modern prokaryote characterization has been strongly influenced by advances in genetic methods. With the fast development of the sequencing technology, the ever increasing number of genomic sequences per species offers the possibility for developing distance determinations based on whole-genome information. The average nucleotide identity (ANI), calculated from pair-wise comparisons of all sequences shared between two given strains, has been proposed as the new metrics for bacterial species definition and classification.