WANG, L.-S.; JANSEN, R.K.; MORET, B.M.E.; RAUBESON, L.A.; WARNOW, T.; University of Pennsylvania; University of Texas at Austin; University of New Mexico; Central Washington University; University of Texas at Austin: Distance-Based Genome Rearrangement Phylogeny

Evolution operates on whole genomes through mutations that change the order and strandedness of genes within the genomes. These events are examples of “rare genomic changes,” which have low frequency and high signal-to-noise ratio. Thus analyses of gene-order data present new opportunities for discoveries about deep evolutionary events, provided that sufficiently accurate methods can be developed to reconstruct evolutionary trees.

In the first half of my talk I will present our results in distance-based genome rearrangement phylogeny reconstruction. We approach the problem by developing new statistically-based true evolutionary distance estimators. These estimators are based on the distributions of genomic distances including breakpoint and inversion distances under Markov Models. In our simulation study, we obtain highly accurate trees by using these new distance estimators, even when the amount of evolution in the dataset is high.

In the second half of my talk, I will present our simulation study using the random tree model proposed by Aldous. The model takes a single parameter, which specifies how balanced the tree topology is. Our simulation study suggests the topology of the model tree plays an important role in the accuracy of tree reconstruction.