Dating ancient splits in phylogenetic trees, with application to the human-Neanderthal split.

ABSTRACT:

Background

We tackle the problem of estimating species TMRCAs (Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor), given a genome sequence from each species and a large known phylogenetic tree with a known structure (typically from one of the species). The number of transitions at each site from the first sequence to the other is assumed to be Poisson distributed, and only the parity of the number of transitions is observed. The detailed phylogenetic tree contains information about the transition rates in each site. We use this formulation to develop and analyze multiple estimators of the species' TMRCA. To test our methods, we use mtDNA substitution statistics from the well-established Phylotree as a baseline for data simulation such that the substitution rate per site mimics the real-world obs

SUBMITTER: Levinstein Hallak K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10759710 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature