How Do You Create Phylogenetic Trees?
Phylogenetic trees are a complicated, highly technical bioinformatic tool used by biologists to determine the evolutionary relationship between different species. In particular, phylogenetics looks at the differences or similarities in genes between species and aims to establish the two species actually originated from a common ancestor. The “tree” is essentially a pictorial representation of this evolutionary relationship. Phylogenetic trees are difficult to construct and should not be attempted by beginners, non-scientists or students without proper guidance from a qualified scientist or expert. Advanced (college level) knowledge of genetics and computational biology is required. Put together a dataset of genes. This requires access to repositories such as GenBank, EMBL or DDBJ from which nucleotide sequences can be downloaded, as well as knowledge of how to use them. Use keyword or sequence-similarity searches to find a group of sequences that are related. Download the “FASTA” forma
