Revisiting the question how many characters are needed to reconstruct the true tree

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• Fischer, M (CIBIV, Vienna)
• Monday 20 June 2011, 11:50-12:10
• Seminar Room 1, Newton Institute.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Mustapha Amrani.

Phylogenetics

The question of how many sequence sites are required to recover the evolutionary relationship of the underlying species accurately is important for phylogeneticists. It is known that a particularly challenging problem for phylogenetic methods arises when a rapid divergence event occurred in the distant past, which leads to long pending branches and a short internal branch in the corresponding phylogenetic tree.

While most previous approaches tackling this problem considered only 2-state models, we investigate the scenario based on all four (DNA) character states. Particularly, we analyze a binary unrooted 4-taxon phylogenetic tree with a short interior edge and pending edges of multiple length. In my talk, I will present an optimal branch length of the interior edge in this case and I will explain how many characters are at least needed to reconstruct the ‘true’ tree.

This talk is part of the Isaac Newton Institute Seminar Series series.

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