Evolutionary sequence analysis of complete eukaryote genomes

Background: Gene duplication and gene loss during the evolution of eukaryotes have hindered attempts to estimate phylogenies and divergence times of species. Although current methods that identify clusters of orthologous genes in complete genomes have helped to investigate gene function and gene content, they have not been optimized for evolutionary sequence analyses requiring strict orthology and complete gene matrices. Here we adopt a relatively simple and fast genome comparison approach designed to assemble orthologs for evolutionary analysis. Our approach identifies single-copy genes representing only species divergences (panorthologs) in order to minimize potential errors caused by gene duplication. We apply this approach to complete sets of proteins from published eukaryote genomes specifically for phylogeny and time estimation. Results: Despite the conservative criterion used, 753 panorthologs (proteins) were identified for evolutionary analysis with four genomes, resulting in ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2005
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Jaime E. Blair, Prachi Shah, S. Blair Hedges
• Keywords: BMCBI 2005, Complete Genome, Gene, Genome