Reverse lookup SISTR cgMLST results

[hetmanb]

One of the most powerful features of the original pubmlst (and mlst in general) was the ability to:

1. take allele profiles and lookup the cgMLST ST designation
2. derive the allele profiles from a cgMLST ST designation

Currently, the SISTR app in IRIDA only allows for the derivation of a unique cgMLST ST from the results of allelic profile assessment, and not the second function. This ST should be unique to the combination of alleles, yet if I am given results that only include ST designations, I have no way to look up what the alleles were originally without re-running the app and outputting the allele profiles directly. Something that would be useful for researchers to easily share results, would be the ability to type in the sequence type designation from SISTR and view what the allele profiles was to actually get this result. This could further be extended to download the sequences of the allele loci in .fasta format.

If the sistr_cmd app already stores information to designate whether an allele is novel or not, then a similar solution could be employed whereby the app stores the allele profile information required to derive the cgMLST ST, and a reverse lookup against this stored information would be much simpler than re-running SISTR if a colleague sends me a spreadsheet with the ST designations and I need the allele profiles.

Thanks!