|
Abstract:
|
The objective of many phylogenetic studies is to reconstruct the evolutionary history of one or more specific genes, and in these cases similarity search engines are often employed to identify closely related molecular sequences from a variety of species. Such searches return hundreds of candidate sequences for a given study, and choosing among these can be an arduous task. However, the importance of thoughtful sequence selection has been largely overlooked in the development of practical phylogenetic tools. Through the derivation of bounds for the error probability associated with the reconstruction of four-leaf trees, known as quartets, as a function of the quartet topology and sequence lengths, we present the foundations for an algorithm that will facilitate phylogenetic analyses by specifying those quartets most likely to be correctly reconstructed from a set of aligned sequences.
|
