# PhyloJS: Bridging phylogenetics and web development with a JavaScript utility library

## TL;DR

PhyloJS is a JavaScript library for handling phylogenetic trees, enabling efficient manipulation and integration with web tools.

## Contribution

PhyloJS introduces a lightweight, zero-dependency JavaScript/TypeScript library for phylogenetic tree manipulation and interoperability.

## Key findings

- PhyloJS efficiently handles large phylogenetic trees with up to 10^6 tips.
- The library is designed for interoperability with other phylogenetic and data visualization tools.
- PhyloJS is available on GitHub with extensive documentation and npm installation support.

## Abstract

There is an increasing number of libraries devoted to parsing, manipulating and visualising phylogenetic trees in JavaScript. Many of these libraries bundle tree manipulation with visualisation, but have limited ability to manipulate trees and lack detailed documentation. As the number of web‐based phylogenetic tools and the size of phylogenetics datasets increases, there is a need for a library that parses, writes and manipulates phylogenetic trees that is interoperable with other phylogenetic and data visualisation libraries. Here we introduce PhyloJS, a light zero‐dependency TypeScript and JavaScript library for reading, writing and manipulating phylogenetic trees. PhyloJS allows for modification of and data‐extraction from trees to integrate with other phylogenetics and data visualisation libraries. It can swiftly handle large trees, up to at least 10
6 tips in size, making it ideal for developing the next generation of more complex web‐based phylogenetics applications handling ever larger datasets. The PhyloJS source code is available on GitHub (https://github.com/clockor2/phylojs) and can be installed via npm with the command npm install phylojs. Extensive documentation is available at https://clockor2.github.io/phylojs/.

A reliably JavaScript utility is lacking from the resources available to the computational biology community. PhyloJS fills this niche by providing a utility library distinct form visualisation, such that future phylogenetics web applications do not need to reinvent the wheel.