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Published on: August 14, 2018
Using serum albumin to infer vertebrate phylogenies
Victoria Metcalf1, Stephen Brennan, Peter George
1Department of Zoology, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. victoria.metcalf@canterbury.ac.nz
Abstract:
The phylogenetic relationships of the two extant lobe-finned fish, coelacanth and lungfish, to tetrapods remain unresolved. In our study of serum albumin in lungfish we determined 101 residues of protein sequence from five peptides. The lungfish sequences were aligned with the albumin superfamily using the UPGMA-based pileup or the progressive ALIGN programs. The tree construction methods employed were maximum parsimony, neighbour joining and TREE. The lungfish albumin sequence was compared with that of other species, and the resulting trees indicated a close relationship of lungfish to tetrapods, in line with the bulk of current phylogenetic evidence.
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