DendroPy 5: a mature Python library for phylogenetic computing

TL;DR

DendroPy 5 is a major update to the Python library for phylogenetic analysis, enhancing its sustainability and long-term support to serve the bioinformatics community's needs.

Contribution

This paper introduces DendroPy version 5, a significant update that ensures the library's sustainability and continued relevance in phylogenetic computing.

Findings

Major milestone in DendroPy's development

Enhanced support for phylogenetic analysis

Positioned for long-term maintenance

Abstract

Contemporary bioinformatics has seen in profound new visibility into the composition, structure, and history of the natural world around us. Arguably, the central pillar of bioinformatics is phylogenetics -- the study of hereditary relatedness among organisms. Insight from phylogenetic analysis has touched nearly every corner of biology. Examples range across natural history, population genetics and phylogeography, conservation biology, public health, medicine, in vivo and in silico experimental evolution, application-oriented evolutionary algorithms, and beyond. High-throughput genetic and phenotypic data has realized groundbreaking results, in large part, through conjunction with open-source software used to process and analyze it. Indeed, the preceding decades have ushered in a flourishing ecosystem of bioinformatics software applications and libraries. Over the course of its nearly fifteen-year history, the DendroPy library for phylogenetic computation in Python has established a generalist niche in serving the bioinformatics community. Here, we report on the recent major release of the library, DendroPy version 5. The software release represents a major milestone in transitioning the library to a sustainable long-term development and maintenance trajectory. As such, this work positions DendroPy to continue fulfilling a key supporting role in phyloinformatics infrastructure.