TESD,
standing for
"Transposable Element Simulator Dynamic", is a scientific application
developed by the Laboratoire de Biométrie et Biologie Evolutive (UMR CNRS 5558, Université Claude
Bernard Lyon 1, France).
Based on "
The
dynamics of
transposable elements in structured populations
", Deceliere et al. (Genetics 2005, 169: 467-474), have
developed the simulation core of TESD in an
object-oriented fashion. TESD simulates the number of genomic TE copies in different populations across generations (according to the Island Model), using classical models of TE dynamics. The parameters of the models (transposition and excision rates, selection intensity, recombination rate, migration rate, population sizes and number of populations) are defined by the users.
To make it more user-friendly, TESD has a graphical interface. Users can set the various parameter values by using forms that ask questions. The results of the simulations are visualized thanks to built-in graphical tools, using the JFreeChart library.
TESD provides a complete application that allows modellers to implement other models of TE dynamics. TESD is implemented in Java, an object-oriented language that can be extended easily, and this means that TESD can be run on all Operating Systems (Linux, Mac, Windows, Solaris, etc.).