Encoding phylogenetic trees in terms of weighted quartets

Type of content
Journal Article
Thesis discipline
Degree name
Publisher
University of Canterbury. Mathematics and Statistics.
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
Date
2008
Authors
Grunewald, S.
Huber, K.T.
Moulton, V.
Semple, C.
Abstract

One of the main problems in phylogenetics is to develop systematic methods for constructing evolutionary or phylogenetic trees. For a set of species X, an edge-weighted phylogenetic X-tree or phylogenetic tree is a (graph theoretical) tree with leaf set X and no degree 2 vertices, to- gether with a map assigning a non-negative length to each edge of the tree. Within phylogenetics, several methods have been proposed for con- structing such trees that work by trying to piece together quartet trees on X, i.e. phylogenetic trees each having four leaves in X. Hence, it is of interest to characterise when a collection of quartet trees corresponds to a (unique) phylogenetic tree. Recently, Dress and Erd os provided such a characterisation for binary phylogenetic trees, that is, phylogenetic trees all of whose internal vertices have degree 3. Here we provide a new char- acterisation for arbitrary phylogenetic trees.

Description
Citation
Grunewald, S., Huber, K.T., Moulton, V., Semple, C. (2008) Encoding phylogenetic trees in terms of weighted quartets. Journal of Mathematical Biology, 56(4), pp. 465-477.
Keywords
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
Rights