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Related Concept Videos

Phylogenetic Trees03:21

Phylogenetic Trees

Phylogenetic trees come in many forms. It matters in which sequence the organisms are arranged from the bottom to the top of the tree, but the branches can rotate at their nodes without altering the information. The lines connecting individual nodes can be straight, angled, or even curved.The length of the branches can depict time or the relative amount of change among organisms. For instance, the branch length might indicate the number of amino acid changes in the sequence that underlies the...
Phylogenetic Trees03:21

Phylogenetic Trees

Phylogenetic trees come in many forms. It matters in which sequence the organisms are arranged from the bottom to the top of the tree, but the branches can rotate at their nodes without altering the information. The lines connecting individual nodes can be straight, angled, or even curved.The length of the branches can depict time or the relative amount of change among organisms. For instance, the branch length might indicate the number of amino acid changes in the sequence that underlies the...
Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons02:54

Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons

Genome comparison is one of the excellent ways to interpret the evolutionary relationships between organisms. The basic principle of genome comparison is that if two species share a common feature, it is likely encoded by the DNA sequence conserved between both species. The advent of genome sequencing technologies in the late 20th century enabled scientists to understand the concept of conservation of domains between species and helped them to deduce evolutionary relationships across diverse...
Microbial Phylogeny01:28

Microbial Phylogeny

Understanding the evolutionary relationships among microorganisms is fundamental to microbial ecology and taxonomy. Phylogenetic trees are essential tools for inferring these relationships, relying primarily on comparative analyses of molecular sequences such as DNA, RNA, or proteins. In microbial studies, these trees typically depict the evolutionary paths of diverse bacterial and archaeal species by mapping genetic differences accumulated over time.Phylogenetic trees are composed of tips,...
Phylogeny01:23

Phylogeny

Phylogeny is concerned with the evolutionary diversification of organisms or groups of organisms. A group of organisms with a name is called a taxon (singular). Taxa (plural) can span different levels of the evolutionary hierarchy. For instance, the group containing all birds is a taxon (comprising the class Aves), and the group of all species of daisies (the genus Bellis) is a taxon. Phylogenies can likewise include just one genus (i.e., depict species relationships) or span an entire...
Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?02:05

Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?

The genomes of eukaryotes are punctuated by long stretches of sequence which do not code for proteins or RNAs. Although some of these regions do contain crucial regulatory sequences, the vast majority of this DNA serves no known function. Typically, these regions of the genome are the ones in which the fastest change, in evolutionary terms, is observed, because there is typically little to no selection pressure acting on these regions to preserve their sequences.
In contrast, regions which code...

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A Practical Guide to Phylogenetics for Nonexperts
12:00

A Practical Guide to Phylogenetics for Nonexperts

Published on: February 5, 2014

Phylogenetic information complexity: is testing a tree easier than finding it?

Mike Steel1, Laszlo Székely, Elchanan Mossel

  • 1Biomathematics Research Centre, Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand. m.steel@math.canterbury.ac.nz

Journal of Theoretical Biology
|June 4, 2009
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Reconstructing phylogenetic trees requires more DNA sequence data than testing a candidate tree, especially as the number of species increases. This difference is significant for some evolutionary models, but not all.

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Last Updated: Jun 22, 2026

A Practical Guide to Phylogenetics for Nonexperts
12:00

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Published on: February 5, 2014

Using Phylogenetic Analysis to Investigate Eukaryotic Gene Origin
08:57

Using Phylogenetic Analysis to Investigate Eukaryotic Gene Origin

Published on: August 14, 2018

Creating and Applying a Reference to Facilitate the Discussion and Classification of Proteins in a Diverse Group
07:49

Creating and Applying a Reference to Facilitate the Discussion and Classification of Proteins in a Diverse Group

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Area of Science:

  • Computational Biology
  • Evolutionary Genetics
  • Phylogenetics

Background:

  • Phylogenetic trees visualize evolutionary history from common ancestors.
  • Reconstruction typically uses aligned DNA sequence data.
  • Key question: data needed for reconstruction vs. testing a candidate tree.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To analytically determine if reconstructing a phylogenetic tree requires significantly more sequence data than testing a candidate tree.
  • To investigate how data requirements scale with the number of species considered.

Main Methods:

  • Analytical approach combining probabilistic and combinatorial arguments.
  • Evaluation across different evolutionary models.
  • Focus on the relationship between data quantity and number of species.

Main Results:

  • For certain models, data requirements for reconstruction and testing are not significantly different.
  • For other models, testing data is independent of species number, while reconstruction data grows with species number.
  • Demonstrates a significant difference in data scaling for specific phylogenetic models.

Conclusions:

  • The amount of sequence data needed for accurate phylogenetic tree reconstruction can be significantly higher than for testing a candidate tree.
  • This difference is model-dependent, impacting the scalability of phylogenetic inference.
  • Highlights the importance of model choice in determining data requirements for evolutionary analysis.