Search research articles

ABOUT JoVE

Overview Leadership Blog JoVE Help Center

AUTHORS

Publishing Process Editorial Board Scope & Policies Peer Review FAQ Submit

LIBRARIANS

Testimonials Subscriptions Access Resources Library Advisory Board FAQ

RESEARCH

JoVE Journal Methods Collections JoVE Encyclopedia of Experiments Archive

EDUCATION

JoVE Core JoVE Business JoVE Science Education JoVE Lab Manual Faculty Resource Center Faculty Site

Terms & Conditions of Use

Related Concept Videos

Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons

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...

Synteny and Evolution

Synteny and Evolution

John H. Renwick first coined the term “synteny” in 1971, which refers to the genes present on the same chromosomes, even if they are not genetically linked. The species with common ancestry tend to show conserved syntenic regions. Therefore, the concept of synteny is nowadays used to describe the evolutionary relationship between species.
Around 80 million years ago, the human and mice lineages diverged from the common ancestor. During the course of evolution, the ancestral...

Phylogenetic Trees

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.

Phylogeny

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 kingdom.

Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?

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...

Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?

Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?

You might also read

Related Articles

Articles linked to this work by shared authors, journal, and citation graph.

Sort by

Same author

Introgression and Divergence in a Young Species Group.

Molecular ecology·2026

Same author

Dispersal evolution in a population infected with a male-killing endosymbiont.

Proceedings. Biological sciences·2026

Same author

A model-free method for genealogical inference without phasing and its application for topology weighting.

Genetics·2025

Same author

Incomplete recombination suppression fuels extensive haplotype diversity in a butterfly colour pattern supergene.

PLoS biology·2025

Same author

The Hypolimnas misippus Genome Supports a Common Origin of the W Chromosome in Lepidoptera.

Genome biology and evolution·2024

Same author

The genome sequence of the Pearl-bordered Fritillary, <i>Boloria euphrosyne</i> (Linnaeus, 1758).

Wellcome open research·2024

Search research articles

Related Experiment Video

Updated: Mar 5, 2026

Divergence of Root Microbiota in Different Habitats based on Weighted Correlation Networks

Divergence of Root Microbiota in Different Habitats based on Weighted Correlation Networks

Published on: September 25, 2021

Exploring Evolutionary Relationships Across the Genome Using Topology Weighting.

Simon H Martin¹, Steven M Van Belleghem^2,3,4

¹Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, CB2 3EJ, United Kingdom shm45@cam.ac.uk.

|March 26, 2017

Summary

We developed topology weighting, a method to quantify and visualize evolutionary relationships between taxa across genomes. This approach simplifies complex phylogenetic data, offering insights into genomic evolutionary dynamics.

Keywords:

incomplete lineage sorting introgression phylogenomics population genomics

More Related Videos

Heuristic Mining of Hierarchical Genotypes and Accessory Genome Loci in Bacterial Populations

Heuristic Mining of Hierarchical Genotypes and Accessory Genome Loci in Bacterial Populations

Published on: December 7, 2021

A Practical Guide to Phylogenetics for Nonexperts

A Practical Guide to Phylogenetics for Nonexperts

Published on: February 5, 2014

Related Experiment Videos

Last Updated: Mar 5, 2026

Divergence of Root Microbiota in Different Habitats based on Weighted Correlation Networks

Divergence of Root Microbiota in Different Habitats based on Weighted Correlation Networks

Published on: September 25, 2021

Heuristic Mining of Hierarchical Genotypes and Accessory Genome Loci in Bacterial Populations

Heuristic Mining of Hierarchical Genotypes and Accessory Genome Loci in Bacterial Populations

Published on: December 7, 2021

A Practical Guide to Phylogenetics for Nonexperts

A Practical Guide to Phylogenetics for Nonexperts

Published on: February 5, 2014

Area of Science:

Genomics
Phylogenetics
Bioinformatics

Background:

Understanding evolutionary relationships between taxa is crucial for genomics.
Non-monophyletic taxa and multiple sequences per taxon create complex phylogenetic scenarios.

Purpose of the Study:

To introduce topology weighting as a method for quantifying taxon relationships.
To visualize how these relationships change across genomic data.
To simplify complex phylogenetic data for broader applicability.

Main Methods:

Developed topology weighting by iterative sampling of subtrees (Twisst).
Quantified the contribution of each taxon topology to the overall phylogenetic tree.
Applied the method to both simulated and real genomic datasets.

Main Results:

Topology weighting effectively reduces complexity in phylogenetic analysis.
The method provides informative visualizations of taxon relationships across genomes.
Demonstrated versatility across diverse genomic datasets.

Conclusions:

Topology weighting is an informative and versatile approach for exploring genomic relationships.
Twisst facilitates the analysis of complex evolutionary histories in genomic data.
The method is suitable for a wide range of genomic datasets.