Lian Xu

Lian Xu

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Lian Xu

Institute for Translational Neuroscience of Affiliated Hospital 2 of Nantong University, Center for Neural Developmental and Degenerative Research of Nantong University, Key Laboratory of Neurodegenerative Diseases , Nantong, Jiangsu 226014

Research Focus & Metrics

Academic Career Length

13Years (2014-Present)

(Calculated once Scilit publication data is synced: current year − year of first publication + 1)

Representative Publications

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6 January 2025 in GigaScience
Verified
Journal Article
Open access
LXLian Xu
Lian Xu
WHWeiming He
Weiming He
STShuaishuai Tai
Shuaishuai Tai
XHXiaoli Huang
Xiaoli Huang
MQMumu Qin
Mumu Qin
NJNana Jin
Nana Jin
Background: Genetic distance metrics are crucial for understanding the evolutionary relationships and population structure of organisms. Progress in next-generation sequencing technology has given rise of genotyping data of thousands of individuals. The standard Variant Call Format (VCF) is widely used to store genomic variation information, but calculating genetic distance and constructing population phylogeny directly from large VCF files can be challenging. Moreover, the existing tools that implement such functions remain limited and have low performance in processing large-scale genotype data, especially in the area of memory efficiency. Findings: To address these challenges, we introduce VCF2Dis, an ultra-fast and efficient tool that calculates pairwise genetic distance directly from large VCF files and then constructs distance-based population phylogeny using the ape package. Benchmarking results demonstrate the tool’s efficiency, with rapid processing times, minimal memory usage (e.g., 0.37 GB for the complete analysis of 2,504 samples with 81.2 million variants), and high accuracy, even when handling datasets with millions of variants from thousands of individuals. Its straightforward command-line interface, compatibility with downstream phylogenetic analysis tools (e.g., MEGA, Phylip, and FastTree), and support for multithreading make it a valuable tool for researchers studying population relationships. These advantages meaning VCF2Dis has already been widely utilized in many published genomic studies. Conclusion: We present VCF2Dis, a straightforward and efficient tool for calculating genetic distance and constructing population phylogeny directly from large-scale genotype data. VCF2Dis has been widely applied, facilitating the exploration of population relationship in extensive genome sequencing studies.