PyOrthoANI, PyFastANI, and Pyskani: a suite of Python libraries for computation of average nucleotide identity

• Published in: bioRxiv
• Main Authors: Larralde, Martin, Zeller, Georg, Carroll, Laura M
• Format: Paper
• Language: English
• Published: Cold Spring Harbor Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press 17.02.2025; Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
• Edition: 1.1
• Subjects: Algorithms; Bioinformatics
• ISSN: 2692-8205; 2692-8205
• DOI: 10.1101/2025.02.13.638148

The average nucleotide identity (ANI) metric has become the gold standard for prokaryotic species delineation in the genomics era. The most popular ANI algorithms are available as command-line tools and/or web applications, making it inconvenient or impossible to incorporate them into bioinformatic workflows, which utilize the popular Python programming language. Here, we present PyOrthoANI, PyFastANI, and Pyskani, Python libraries for three popular ANI computation methods. ANI values produced by PyOrthoANI, PyFastANI, and Pyskani are virtually identical to those produced by OrthoANI, FastANI, and skani, respectively. All three libraries integrate seamlessly with BioPython, making it easy and convenient to use, compare, and benchmark popular ANI algorithms within Python-based workflows. Availability and Implementation: Source code is open-source and available via GitHub (PyOrthoANI, https://github.com/althonos/orthoani; PyFastANI, https://github.com/althonos/pyfastani; Pyskani, https://github.com/althonos/pyskani). Supplementary Information: Supplementary data are available on bioRxiv.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.