Split Scores on Phylogenetic Trees and Applications

• Activity Number: 594
• Type: Topic Contributed
• Date/Time: Wednesday, August 12, 2015 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Biometrics Section
• Author(s): Elizbeth Allman* and Laura Kubatko and John Rhodes
• Companies: University of Alaska - Fairbanks and The Ohio State University and University of Alaska - Fairbanks
• Keywords: phylogenetics ; tree reconstruction ; Markov models

Abstract

From DNA sequence data collected from n taxa, we construct a `split score' under the assumption that the aligned sequences have evolved under the general Markov model (GM) on an evolutionary tree. This split score, based on theoretical properties for the GM model on trees, can be computed efficiently from genomic scale data using the singular value decomposition. In this talk, we describe this split score and illustrate how it might be used to detect true splits in the evolutionary tree relating taxa, and shifts in the evolutionary process along a chromosome.