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Identifying dramatic selection shifts in phylogenetic trees.

ABSTRACT: The rate of evolution varies spatially along genomes and temporally in time. The presence of evolutionary rate variation is an informative signal that often marks functional regions of genomes and historical selection events. There exist many tests for temporal rate variation, or heterotachy, that start by partitioning sampled sequences into two or more groups and testing rate homogeneity among the groups. I develop a Bayesian method to infer phylogenetic trees with a divergence point, or dramatic temporal shifts in selection pressure that affect many nucleotide sites simultaneously, located at an unknown position in the tree.Simulation demonstrates that the method is most able to detect divergence points when rate variation and the number of affected sites is high, but not beyond biologically relevant values. The method is applied to two viral data sets. A divergence point is identified separating the B and C subtypes, two genetically distinct variants of HIV that have spread into different human populations with the AIDS epidemic. In contrast, no strong signal of temporal rate variation is found in a sample of F and H genotypes, two genetic variants of HBV that have likely evolved with humans during their immigration and expansion into the Americas.Temporal shifts in evolutionary rate of sufficient magnitude are detectable in the history of sampled sequences. The ability to detect such divergence points without the need to specify a prior hypothesis about the location or timing of the divergence point should help scientists identify historically important selection events and decipher mechanisms of evolution.

SUBMITTER: Dorman KS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1796604 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Identifying dramatic selection shifts in phylogenetic trees.

Dorman Karin S KS

BMC evolutionary biology 20070208

<h4>Background</h4>The rate of evolution varies spatially along genomes and temporally in time. The presence of evolutionary rate variation is an informative signal that often marks functional regions of genomes and historical selection events. There exist many tests for temporal rate variation, or heterotachy, that start by partitioning sampled sequences into two or more groups and testing rate homogeneity among the groups. I develop a Bayesian method to infer phylogenetic trees with a divergen ...[more]

PMID: 17288568

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Project description:BackgroundPhylogenetic trees based on sequences from a set of taxa can be incongruent due to horizontal gene transfer (HGT). By identifying the HGT events, we can reconcile the gene trees and derive a taxon tree that adequately represents the species' evolutionary history. One HGT can be represented by a rooted Subtree Prune and Regraft (RSPR) operation and the number of RSPRs separating two trees corresponds to the minimum number of HGT events. Identifying the minimum number of RSPRs separating two trees is NP-hard, but the problem can be reduced to fixed parameter tractable. A number of heuristic and two exact approaches to identifying the minimum number of RSPRs have been proposed. This is the first implementation delivering an exact solution as well as the intermediate trees connecting the input trees.ResultsWe present the SPR Identification Tool (SPRIT), a novel algorithm that solves the fixed parameter tractable minimum RSPR problem and its GPL licensed Java implementation. The algorithm can be used in two ways, exhaustive search that guarantees the minimum RSPR distance and a heuristic approach that guarantees finding a solution, but not necessarily the minimum one. We benchmarked SPRIT against other software in two different settings, small to medium sized trees i.e. five to one hundred taxa and large trees i.e. thousands of taxa. In the small to medium tree size setting with random artificial incongruence, SPRIT's heuristic mode outperforms the other software by always delivering a solution with a low overestimation of the RSPR distance. In the large tree setting SPRIT compares well to the alternatives when benchmarked on finding a minimum solution within a reasonable time. SPRIT presents both the minimum RSPR distance and the intermediate trees.ConclusionsWhen used in exhaustive search mode, SPRIT identifies the minimum number of RSPRs needed to reconcile two incongruent rooted trees. SPRIT also performs quick approximations of the minimum RSPR distance, which are comparable to, and often better than, purely heuristic solutions. Put together, SPRIT is an excellent tool for identification of HGT events and pinpointing which taxa have been involved in HGT.

Dataset Information

Identifying dramatic selection shifts in phylogenetic trees.

Publications

Identifying dramatic selection shifts in phylogenetic trees.

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