Detecting lateral gene transfers by statistical reconciliation of phylogenetic forests.

ABSTRACT:

Background

To understand the evolutionary role of Lateral Gene Transfer (LGT), accurate methods are needed to identify transferred genes and infer their timing of acquisition. Phylogenetic methods are particularly promising for this purpose, but the reconciliation of a gene tree with a reference (species) tree is computationally hard. In addition, the application of these methods to real data raises the problem of sorting out real and artifactual phylogenetic conflict.

Results

We present Prunier, a new method for phylogenetic detection of LGT based on the search for a maximum statistical agreement forest (MSAF) between a gene tree and a reference tree. The program is flexible as it can use any definition of "agreement" among trees. We evaluate the performance of Prunier and

SUBMITTER: Abby SS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2905365 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature