Topological variation in single-gene phylogenetic trees 英文参考文献.docVIP

Minireview Topological variation in single-gene phylogenetic trees Jose Castresana Address: Department of Physiology and Molecular Biodiversity, Institute of Molecular Biology of Barcelona, CSIC, 08034 Barcelona, Spain. Email: jcvagr@ibmb.csic.es Published: 13 June 2007 Genome Biology 2007, 8:216 (doi:10.1186/gb-2007-8-6-216) The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2007/8/6/216 ? 2007 BioMed Central Ltd Abstract A recent large-scale phylogenomic study has shown the great degree of topological variation that can be found among eukaryotic phylogenetic trees constructed from single genes, highlighting the problems that can be associated with gene sampling in phylogenetic studies. In 1982, Penny, Foulds and Hendy [1] made a test of the theory of evolution by comparing phylogenetic trees con- structed from different protein-coding genes from the same set of species. Specifically, they tested whether a unique evolutionary tree relating these genes existed or not, and whether it could be recovered. The existence of such a tree was important, not only to confirm the theory of evolution, but also to show that this theory allowed quantitative and falsifiable predictions. At that time, five proteins from 11 mammalian species were available for the study, but each Nowadays, we take it as read that eukaryotes are related by a unique phylogenetic tree. Instead, the focus of recent phylogenetic work has shifted to studying whether we can determine the exact branching pattern of this tree. The results have been mixed. Many nodes, or branchpoints, on the eukaryotic tree were well known before the advent of molecular sequences, and molecular phylogenies have simply confirmed them. In other cases, unexpected nodes, such as the one that splits off a group of mammals of African origin into the Afrotheria [4