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Updated: May 13, 2026

Using Phylogenetic Analysis to Investigate Eukaryotic Gene Origin
Published on: August 14, 2018
Assessing statistical reliability of phylogenetic trees via a speedy double bootstrap method
Aizhen Ren1, Takashi Ishida, Yutaka Akiyama
1Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology, 2-12-1 Ookayama, Tokyo 152-8552, Japan. ren@bi.cs.titech.ac.jp
The speedy double bootstrap method accurately assesses phylogenetic tree reliability faster than traditional methods. This computational advance makes complex phylogenetic analyses more accessible for molecular evolution studies.
Area of Science:
- Computational Biology
- Molecular Phylogenetics
- Statistical Modeling
Background:
- Assessing phylogenetic tree reliability is crucial for accurate molecular phylogenetics.
- The standard bootstrap method can be biased, impacting reliability.
- Advanced methods like the double bootstrap are accurate but computationally intensive.
Purpose of the Study:
- To develop a computationally efficient double bootstrap method for phylogenetic tree assessment.
- To enable practical application of the double bootstrap in molecular phylogenetics.
- To offer a generalizable method for model selection using maximum likelihood.
Main Methods:
- Proposed the 'speedy double bootstrap' method, omitting the second-tier resampling step.
- Implemented the regular double bootstrap for comparative analysis.
- Tested methods on mammalian mitochondrial amino acid sequences and rRNA genes.
Main Results:
- The speedy double bootstrap shows no significant loss in accuracy compared to the regular double bootstrap.
- The speedy method is significantly faster, at least 371 times quicker in tested cases.
- Demonstrated the practical feasibility of double bootstrap for phylogenetic tree selection.
Conclusions:
- The speedy double bootstrap provides an accurate and computationally efficient alternative for assessing phylogenetic reliability.
- This method overcomes previous computational limitations, making double bootstrap viable for large-scale phylogenetics.
- The approach has broader applicability in model selection problems utilizing the maximum likelihood criterion.
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