This algorithm is used by \code{\link[=as.mo]{as.mo()}} and all the \code{\link[=mo_property]{mo_*}} functions to determine the most probable match of taxonomic records based on user input.
This algorithm was originally developed in 2018 and subsequently described in: Berends MS \emph{et al.} (2022). \strong{AMR: An R Package for Working with Antimicrobial Resistance Data}. \emph{Journal of Statistical Software}, 104(3), 1-31; \doi{10.18637/jss.v104.i03}.
Later, the work of Bartlett A \emph{et al.} about bacterial pathogens infecting humans (2022, \doi{10.1099/mic.0.001269}) was incorporated, and optimalisations to the algorithm were made.
With ambiguous user input in \code{\link[=as.mo]{as.mo()}} and all the \code{\link[=mo_property]{mo_*}} functions, the returned results are chosen based on their matching score using \code{\link[=mo_matching_score]{mo_matching_score()}}. This matching score \eqn{m}, is calculated as:
\item \eqn{n} is a taxonomic name (genus, species, and subspecies);
\item \eqn{l_n} is the length of \eqn{n};
\item \eqn{lev} is the \href{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance}{Levenshtein distance function} (counting any insertion as 1, and any deletion or substitution as 2) that is needed to change \eqn{x} into \eqn{n};
The grouping into human pathogenic prevalence \eqn{p} is based on recent work from Bartlett \emph{et al.} (2022, \doi{10.1099/mic.0.001269}) who extensively studied medical-scientific literature to categorise all bacterial species into these groups:
\item \strong{Established}, if a taxonomic species has infected at least three persons in three or more references. These records have \code{prevalence = 1.15} in the \link{microorganisms} data set;
\item \strong{Putative}, if a taxonomic species has fewer than three known cases. These records have \code{prevalence = 1.25} in the \link{microorganisms} data set.
\item Any other genus present in the \strong{putative} list has \code{prevalence = 1.25} in the \link{microorganisms} data set;
\item Any other species or subspecies of which the genus is present in the two aforementioned groups, has \code{prevalence = 1.5} in the \link{microorganisms} data set;
All matches are sorted descending on their matching score and for all user input values, the top match will be returned. This will lead to the effect that e.g., \code{"E. coli"} will return the microbial ID of \emph{Escherichia coli} (\eqn{m = 0.688}, a highly prevalent microorganism found in humans) and not \emph{Entamoeba coli} (\eqn{m = 0.381}, a less prevalent microorganism in humans), although the latter would alphabetically come first.
All data sets in this \code{AMR} package (about microorganisms, antibiotics, SIR interpretation, EUCAST rules, etc.) are publicly and freely available for download in the following formats: R, MS Excel, Apache Feather, Apache Parquet, SPSS, and Stata. We also provide tab-separated plain text files that are machine-readable and suitable for input in any software program, such as laboratory information systems. Please visit \href{https://msberends.github.io/AMR/articles/datasets.html}{our website for the download links}. The actual files are of course available on \href{https://github.com/msberends/AMR/tree/main/data-raw}{our GitHub repository}.
