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Sources of variation in ancestral sequence reconstruction for HIV-1 envelope genes.

ABSTRACT: We characterized the variation in the reconstructed ancestor of 118 HIV-1 envelope gene sequences arising from the methods used for (a) estimating and (b) rooting the phylogenetic tree, and (c) reconstructing the ancestor on that tree, from (d) the sequence format, and from (e) the number of input sequences. The method of rooting the tree was responsible for most of the sequence variation both among the reconstructed ancestral sequences and between the ancestral and observed sequences. Variation in predicted 3-D structural properties of the ancestors mirrored their sequence variation. The observed sequence consensus and ancestral sequences from center-rooted trees were most similar in all predicted attributes. Only for the predicted number of N-glycosylation sites was there a difference between MP and ML methods of reconstruction. Taxon sampling effects were observed only for outgroup-rooted trees, not center-rooted, reflecting the occurrence of several divergent basal sequences. Thus, for sequences exhibiting a radial phylogenetic tree, as does HIV-1, most of the variation in the estimated ancestor arises from the method of rooting the phylogenetic tree. Those investigating the ancestors of genes exhibiting such a radial tree should pay particular attention to alternate rooting methods in order to obtain a representative sample of ancestors.

SUBMITTER: Ross HA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2674662 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Sources of variation in ancestral sequence reconstruction for HIV-1 envelope genes.

Ross Howard A HA Nickle David C DC Liu Yi Y Heath Laura L Jensen Mark A MA Rodrigo Allen G AG Mullins James I JI

Evolutionary bioinformatics online 20070113

We characterized the variation in the reconstructed ancestor of 118 HIV-1 envelope gene sequences arising from the methods used for (a) estimating and (b) rooting the phylogenetic tree, and (c) reconstructing the ancestor on that tree, from (d) the sequence format, and from (e) the number of input sequences. The method of rooting the tree was responsible for most of the sequence variation both among the reconstructed ancestral sequences and between the ancestral and observed sequences. Variation ...[more]

PMID: 19455202

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Project description:Ancestral sequence reconstruction (ASR) is a phylogenetic method widely used to analyze the properties of ancient biomolecules and to elucidate mechanisms of molecular evolution. Despite its increasingly widespread application, the accuracy of ASR is currently unknown, as it is generally impossible to compare resurrected proteins to the true ancestors. Which evolutionary models are best for ASR? How accurate are the resulting inferences? Here we answer these questions using a cross-validation method to reconstruct each extant sequence in an alignment with ASR methodology, a method we term "extant sequence reconstruction" (ESR). We thus can evaluate the accuracy of ASR methodology by comparing ESR reconstructions to the corresponding known true sequences. We find that a common measure of the quality of a reconstructed sequence, the average probability, is indeed a good estimate of the fraction of correct amino acids when the evolutionary model is accurate or overparameterized. However, the average probability is a poor measure for comparing reconstructions from different models, because, surprisingly, a more accurate phylogenetic model often results in reconstructions with lower probability. While better (more predictive) models may produce reconstructions with lower sequence identity to the true sequences, better models nevertheless produce reconstructions that are more biophysically similar to true ancestors. In addition, we find that a large fraction of sequences sampled from the reconstruction distribution may have fewer errors than the single most probable (SMP) sequence reconstruction, despite the fact that the SMP has the lowest expected error of all possible sequences. Our results emphasize the importance of model selection for ASR and the usefulness of sampling sequence reconstructions for analyzing ancestral protein properties. ESR is a powerful method for validating the evolutionary models used for ASR and can be applied in practice to any phylogenetic analysis of real biological sequences. Most significantly, ESR uses ASR methodology to provide a general method by which the biophysical properties of resurrected proteins can be compared to the properties of the true protein.

Dataset Information

Sources of variation in ancestral sequence reconstruction for HIV-1 envelope genes.

Publications

Sources of variation in ancestral sequence reconstruction for HIV-1 envelope genes.

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