A novel approach to phylogenetic tree construction using stochastic optimization and clustering

Background: The problem of inferring the evolutionary history and constructing the phylogenetic tree with high performance has become one of the major problems in computational biology. Results: A new phylogenetic tree construction method from a given set of objects (proteins, species, etc.) is presented. As an extension of ant colony optimization, this method proposes an adaptive phylogenetic clustering algorithm based on a digraph to find a tree structure that defines the ancestral relationships among the given objects. Conclusion: Our phylogenetic tree construction method is tested to compare its results with that of the genetic algorithm (GA). Experimental results show that our algorithm converges much faster and also achieves higher quality than GA. Background An evolutionary tree, or phylogenetic tree, is a model of the evolutionary history for a set of species. With more and more DNA and protein sequences have been obtained [1-3], the problem of inferring the evolutionary histo...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Ling Qin, Yixin Chen, Yi Pan, Ling Chen
• Keywords: BMCBI 2006, Phylogenetic Tree, Phylogenetic Tree Construction, Tree Construction Method