Phylogenetics
In biology, phylogenetics (Greek: phylon = tribe, race and genetikos = relative to birth, from genesis = birth) is the study of evolutionary relatedness among various groups of organisms (e.g., species, populations). Phylogenetics, also known as phylogenetic systematics, treats a species as a group of lineage-connected individuals over time. Phylogenetic taxonomy, which is an offshoot of, but not a logical consequence of, phylogenetic systematics, constitutes a means of classifying groups of organisms according to degree of evolutionary relatedness.
"Phylogenetics is the science of estimating the evolutionary past, in the case of molecular phylogeny, based on the comparison of DNA or protein sequences." — Sandra L. Baldauf
Phylogeny (or phylogenesis) is the origin and evolution of a set of organisms, usually a set of species. A major task of systematics is to determine the ancestral relationships among known species (both living and extinct). The most commonly used methods to infer phylogenies include cladistics, phenetics, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian inference. These last two depend upon a mathematical model describing the evolution of characters observed in the species included, and are usually used for molecular phylogeny where the characters are aligned nucleotide or amino acid sequences.
Contents
Terminology
"A phylogenetic tree is composed of branches (edges) and nodes. Branches connect nodes; a node is the point at which two (or more) branches diverge. Branches and nodes can be internal or external (terminal). An internal node corresponds to the hypothetical last common ancestor (LCA) of everything arising from it. Terminal nodes correspond to the sequences from which the tree was derived (also referred to as operational taxonomic units or 'OTUs'). Trees can be made up of multigene families (gene trees) or a single gene from many taxa (species trees, at least theoretically) or a combination of the two. In the first case, the internal nodes correspond to gene duplication events, in the second to speciation events." — Sandra L. Baldauf
Groups
- monophyletic (holophyletic)
- a natural group; all members are derived from a unique common ancestor (with respect to the rest of the tree) and have inherited a set of unique common traits (characters) from it (Baldauf, 2003).
- paraphyletic
- a group exluding some of its descendents (e.g. animals excluding humans) (Baldauf, 2003).
- polyphyletic
- a mixture of distantly related OTUs, perhaps superficially resembling one another or retaining similar primitive characteristics; that is, not a group at all (Baldauf, 2003).
Trees
Roots
- outgroup
- anything that is not a natural member of the group of interest (i.e. the 'ingroup') (Baldauf, 2003).
- outcast
- the excluded member of a monophyletic group (i.e. the exclusion that makes it paraphyletic) is not an outgroup, it is an outcast (e.g. humans are not an outgroup of animals) (Baldauf, 2003).
Homology
Homologues can be orthologues or paralogues.
- orthologues
- Orthologues are genes thought to have evolved strictly by vertical descent (or vertically transmitted) from a common ancestor (e.e. parent to offspring). These genes usually arise a common ancestral gene during speciation. Orthologous genes may or may not be responsible for a similar function. Their phylogeny traces that of their host lineage. Orthologues only duplicate when their host divides (i.e. along with the rest of the genome).
- paralogues
- members of multigene families; they arise by gene duplication (Baldauf, 2003).
Books
Phylogenetic Systematics
- Willi Hennig
- University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1966.
- ISBN 0252068149 (280 pages)
Description: This book popularized the techniques of cladistics in the English-speaking world. It is based on work published in German starting 1950. Willi Hennig is considered the founder of cladistics, which he developed while working as an entomologist in East Germany.
Inferring Phylogenies
- Joseph Felsenstein
- Sinauer Associates, 2004.
- ISBN 0878931775 (664 pages)
Description: An excellent technical manual to guide any biologist wishing to construct a phylogenetic hypothesis.
See also
- Bayesian inference
- Phylogenetic tree
- Evolutionary tree
- Molecular phylogeny
- Maximum likelihood
- Bioinformatics
Keywords
interior branch tests, polymorphism parsimony, quartets distance, expected pattern frequencies, parsimony score, multifurcating trees, least squares branch lengths, consensus supertree, unrooted tree topology, coalescent trees, quartets methods, ancestral selection graph, distance matrix methods, phylogenetic invariants, short quartets, unit branch length, unrooted bifurcating trees, coalescent genealogy, postorder tree traversal, least squares tree, different tree topologies, partial bootstrap, clock invariants, tree with branch lengths, branch that separates, common stem species, apomorphous conditions, comparative holomorphology, holomorphological method, phylogenetic kinship, hologenetic relationships, one stem species, autogenetic relationships, vicarying reproductive communities, tokogenetic relationships, genetic species concept, synapomorphous characters, mantle papillae, same absolute rank, absolute rank order, accessory criteria, phylogenetic systematics this, typological systematics, single stem species, hierarchic type, chorological method, species cleavage, parasitological method, general reference system, plesiomorphous characters
References
- Baldauf S (2003). Phylogeny for the faint of heart: a tutorial. TRENDS in Genetics 19(6):345-351.
