The accumulation of whole-genome data has renewed interest in the study of genomic rearrangements. Comparative genomics, evolutionary biology, and cancer research all require models and algorithms to elucidate the mechanisms, history, and consequences of these rearrangements. However, rearrangements lead to NP-hard problems, so that current approaches, such as the MGR tool, are limited to small...

For parsimony analysis of the edge length represent the observed number of changes. Reconstructing ancestral states therefore defines also the edge lengths of a tree. However there can exist several equally parsimonious reconstructions or states can be ambiguous and therefore edge length can differ. ”MPR” reconstructs the ancestral states for each (internal) node as if the tree would be rooted ...

For parsimony analysis of the edge length represent the observed number of changes. Reconstructing ancestral states therefore defines also the edge lengths of a tree. However there can exist several equally parsimonious reconstructions or states can be ambiguous and therefore edge length can differ. ”MPR” reconstructs the ancestral states for each (internal) node as if the tree would be rooted ...

Convergence is the process by which several species independently evolve similar traits. This evolutionary process is not only strongly related to fundamental questions such as the predictability of evolution and the role of adaptation, its study also may provide new insights about genes involved in the convergent character. We focus on this latter question and aim to detect molecular basis of ...

A statistical method was developed for reconstructing the nucleotide or amino acid sequences of extinct ancestors, given the phylogeny and sequences of the extant species. A model of nucleotide or amino acid substitution was employed to analyze data of the present-day sequences, and maximum likelihood estimates of parameters such as branch lengths were used to compare the posterior probabilitie...

Since most dramatic genomic changes are caused by genome rearrangements as well as gene duplications and gain/loss events, it becomes crucial to understand their mechanisms and reconstruct ancestral genomes of the given genomes. This problem was shown to be NP-complete even in the "simplest" case of three genomes, thus calling for heuristic rather than exact algorithmic solutions. At the same t...