Acknowledgements

The CarthaGène software started out in 1995 from the confrontation of 2 computer scientists and one statistician with a multiple population data-set of backcross-like data. From this initial team, only one computer scientist remains. Thanks to C. Gaspin for respectively incorporating the genetic algorithm and B. Mangin for helping us dealing with genetics, pedigree, segregation ratio...

Denis Chenevière entirely implemented a first version of the graphical interface during his CNAM engineer project.

CarthaGène also largely benefited from the interaction will real data (and those that produced the data !). Thanks to to Valérie Laurent (and Trichogramma brassicae), Vincent Lombard (and Brassica napus), to Karim Gharbi (and Salmo trutta), to Jean-Francois Rami (private data - Euralis :-), Jean-Paul Bouchet (Aurige et CarthaGène) for their suggestions and the motivation they created.

We would like to conclude with a very special thank for Denis Milan (and Sus scrofa) for inviting us in the radiated hybrid world with ImprH. Some of the commands you may appreciate the most in CarthaGène exist mainly because of the interaction with Denis. Watch out for new commands in the future !

A few years later, a new methodology based on comparative mapping is now available thanks to Thomas Faraut who first introduced the idea of a comparative mapping software and who gave the theoretical and algorithmic foundations necessary to achieve this goal. This approach was further extended by Bertrand Servin who proposed to exploit map distributions using Markov Chain Monte Carlo.

One year later, C. Nelson (Univ. Kansas) joined the CarthaGène development team and introduced code for dealing with advanced backcross data (combining backcross, selfing, doubling...).

CarthaGène is entirely open source and is hosted by the G-Forge collaborative development site of the Applied Mathematics and Computer Science Department of the french National Institute for Agronomical Research (INRA), Mulcyber.