TaxMan: a taxonomic database manager

Background: Phylogenetic analysis of large, multiple-gene datasets, assembled from public sequence databases, is rapidly becoming a popular way to approach difficult phylogenetic problems. Supermatrices (concatenated multiple sequence alignments of multiple genes) can yield more phylogenetic signal than individual genes. However, manually assembling such datasets for a large taxonomic group is time-consuming and error-prone. Additionally, sequence curation, alignment and assessment of the results of phylogenetic analysis are made particularly difficult by the potential for a given gene in a given species to be unrepresented, or to be represented by multiple or partial sequences. We have developed a software package, TaxMan, that largely automates the processes of sequence acquisition, consensus building, alignment and taxon selection to facilitate this type of phylogenetic study. Results: TaxMan uses freely available tools to allow rapid assembly, storage and analysis of large, aligne...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: BMCBI
• Authors: Martin Jones, Mark Blaxter
• Keywords: BMCBI 2006, Multiple Sequence Alignments, Phylogenetic, Phylogenetic Analysis