SNiPloid: A Utility to Exploit High-Throughput SNP Data Derived from RNA-Seq in Allopolyploid Species.

High-throughput sequencing is a common approach to discover SNP variants, especially in plant species. However, methods to analyze predicted SNPs are often optimized for diploid plant species whereas many crop species are allopolyploids and combine related but divergent subgenomes (homoeologous chromosome sets). We created a software tool, SNiPloid, that exploits and interprets putative SNPs in the context of allopolyploidy by comparing SNPs from an allopolyploid with those obtained in its modern-day diploid progenitors. SNiPloid can compare SNPs obtained from a sample to estimate the subgenome contribution to the transcriptome or SNPs obtained from two polyploid accessions to search for SNP divergence.