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Updated: Sep 21, 2026

Primer Extension Capture: Targeted Sequence Retrieval from Heavily Degraded DNA Sources
Published on: September 3, 2009
GeneTRACE-reconstruction of gene content of ancestral species
Victor Kunin1, Christos A Ouzounis
1Computational Genomics Group, The European Bioinformatics Institute, EMBL Cambridge Outstation, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK.
Abstract:
While current computational methods allow the reconstruction of individual ancestral protein sequences, reconstruction of complete gene content of ancestral species is not yet an established task. In this paper, we describe GENETRACE, an efficient linear-time algorithm that allows the reconstruction of evolutionary history of individual protein families as well as the complete gene content of ancestral species. The performance of the method was validated with a simulated evolution program called SimulEv. Our results indicate that given a set of correct phylogenetic profiles and a correct species tree, ancestral gene content can be reconstructed with sensitivity and selectivity of more than 90%. SimulEv simulations were also used to evaluate performance of the reconstruction of gene content-based phylogenetic trees, suggesting that these trees may be accurate at the terminal branches but suffer from long branch attraction near the root of the tree.
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