2nd annual MGSE Symposium - Institute for Evolution and ...

Gerrit Hartig 1
1
Institute for Evolution and
Biodiversity,
Westfälische Wilhelms-
University, Münster
geha@uni-bonn.de
32
Development of a software tool for genome-wide
phylogenetic analysis of TE insertions
Phylogenetic inference from molecular sequence data suffers from systematic error such
as diminishing signals due to substitution saturation (“multiple hits”) and relies heavily
on simplified evolutionary models whose assumptions are often not fulfilled by real
sequences. Rare genomic events like, e.g., changes in gene order or near-intron-positions
(NIPs) are a promising alternative due to their much larger space of character states. For
groups of organisms with shallower divergences like birds and mammals insertions of
transposable elements (TEs) are especially well-suited rare genomic events. Until recently
TE insertion characters could only be acquired for a restricted number of loci by targetamplification
with PCR. With the rise of the genomic era it becomes now possible to mine
these characters efficiently from genome project data in a high-throughput approach.
This sort of analysis requires both, proficiency in a programming language as well as
good knowledge of TE biology. In my PhD project I am developing a software suite that
will empower researchers, who are equipped with nothing more than a burning interest
in a certain phylogenetic question to carry out this analysis independently. In my talk
I will use the interesting question of the phylogenetic affiliations of the tarsier (Tarsius
syrichta) as an example to outline the steps that have to be implemented in such a
software application.