About the Authors

Haitham Marakeby

Contributed equally to this work with: Haitham Marakeby, Eman Badr, Hanaa Torkey

Affiliation Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Eman Badr

Contributed equally to this work with: Haitham Marakeby, Eman Badr, Hanaa Torkey

Affiliation Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Hanaa Torkey

Contributed equally to this work with: Haitham Marakeby, Eman Badr, Hanaa Torkey

Affiliation Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Yuhyun Song

Affiliation Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Scotland Leman

Affiliation Department of Statistics, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Caroline L. Monteil

Affiliations Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology and Weed Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America, INRA, UR0407 Pathologie Végétale; Montfavet, France

Lenwood S. Heath

Affiliations Department of Computer Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America, This Genomic Life Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Boris A. Vinatzer

vinatzer@vt.edu

Affiliations Department of Plant Pathology, Physiology and Weed Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America, This Genomic Life Inc., Blacksburg, Virginia, United States of America

Competing Interests

Boris Vinatzer is a PLOS ONE Editorial Board member. A provisional patent describing genome similarity-based codes was submitted by Virginia Tech in 2013. Name of provisional patent: “A Method to Assign Genome-Based Identification Numbers to Classes of Organisms” with U.S. Patent Application number 61/774,030. The corresponding author Boris A. Vinatzer and the contributing author Lenwood S. Heath also founded This Genomic Life Inc. with the intent of developing technology for assigning genome similarity-based codes on a large scale. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: SL LSH BAV. Analyzed the data: HM EB HT YS SL LSH BAV. Wrote the paper: CLM LSH BAV.