STRhub

STRhub is an open, web-based educational and exploratory platform for forensic Short Tandem Repeat (STR) genetics.

Link to the platform: https://strhub.app/

It is designed to make key forensic genetics concepts transparent, visual, and accessible, without requiring laboratory infrastructure, proprietary software, or black-box pipelines.

STRhub bridges the gap between theory, interpretation, and intuition by allowing users to explore how STR data behave under different forensic scenarios, including allele structure, population frequencies, mixture proportions, degradation, and conceptual links between capillary electrophoresis (CE) and next-generation sequencing (NGS)–based data.

STRhub is not a casework tool and does not replace validated forensic software.
It is a conceptual, educational, and research-support platform focused on understanding, interpretability, and transparency.

Intended Scope

STRhub is intended for:

• Education and training in forensic genetics
• Academic courses, workshops, and demonstrations
• Conceptual exploration of STR behavior and interpretation
• Research support, discussion, and hypothesis visualization

STRhub is not intended for:

• Forensic casework
• Legal or evidentiary reporting
• Automated genotype calling or operational interpretation

What You Can Explore

• STR structure

  • Core repeats and flanking regions
  • Sequence-level variation and isoalleles

• CE-based signal behavior

  • CE-like peak representations
  • Relative signal contribution without laboratory assumptions

• Conceptual CE to NGS bridge

  • NGS-like coverage representations derived from relative signal contribution
  • No physical equivalence assumed between RFU values and read counts

• Mixture behavior (educational)

  • Contributor proportions
  • Allele sharing and balance
  • Interpretation challenges in mixed profiles

• Population frequency data

  • Exploration of allele frequency distributions
  • Comparative views across loci and populations

Data Sources and Transparency

All descriptive catalog information and population frequency data used in STRhub are derived exclusively from established and publicly available resources, including:

• STRidER
• STRBase
• ISFG recommendations
• Other open STR datasets

All sources are harmonized through an internal standardization workflow to ensure consistency in marker naming, allele designation, and metadata representation.

Evaluation Philosophy

STRhub does not follow a classical operational validation framework.

Evaluation focuses on:

• Internal consistency of the models
• Conceptual accuracy relative to forensic genetics principles
• Coherence with published forensic descriptions
• Manual verification of allele annotations against reference resources
• Qualitative feedback from forensic practitioners and advanced students

The platform prioritizes explainability over performance metrics.

About This Repository

This repository contains the source code that powers the STRhub web platform.

While the code is openly available, STRhub is not designed as a developer SDK.
Contributions, issues, and discussions are welcome, provided they align with the platform’s educational, transparency-first philosophy.

Search engine pings (IndexNow)

After every production deploy, the IndexNow GitHub Action tells Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yandex, Seznam and Naver which pages changed, based on the lastmod dates in /sitemap.xml. The key is lib/indexnow.ts plus its public/<key>.txt file. To send URLs by hand:

pnpm indexnow                          # sitemap URLs changed in the last 2 days
pnpm indexnow --all                    # every sitemap URL
pnpm indexnow https://strhub.app/marker/d3s1358

Add --dry-run to see the list without sending it. Google does not use IndexNow; it reads the sitemap and Search Console.

Citation

If you use STRhub for teaching, academic discussion, or research contexts, please cite:

Frontanilla T. et al.
STRhub: an open platform for transparent exploration of forensic STR genetics
Manuscript under review

(Citation details will be updated upon publication.)

Until then, please cite the software release archived on Zenodo:

Frontanilla Recalde, T. S. (2026). STRhub: Central Hub for Short Tandem Repeats (v1.0.0) [Software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22831681

CITATION.cff carries the same metadata (GitHub's "Cite this repository" button uses it).

Disclaimer

STRhub is provided for educational and research purposes only.
It must not be used for forensic casework, legal reporting, or evidentiary interpretation.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0.
STRhub is and will remain free and open-source for the forensic genetics community.