FlipCut Supertrees: Große und akkurate Phylogenien schneller bestimmen

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Sebastian Böcker
• Subject Area: Bioinformatics and Theoretical Biology
• Term: from 2012 to 2016
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 211926079

Supertree approaches combine input trees with overlapping taxa sets into one large and more comprehensive tree. Here, the problem is dealing with incompatible data in a reasonable way. Supertree methods can be used as part of a divide-and-conquer approach for phylogenetic tree inference: (1) we compute, say, maximum likelihood (ML) trees for several subsets of taxa; (2) we merge the resulting trees into one supertree; (3) finally, we use this supertree as a seed for an ML analysis on the complete set of taxa. Current supertree methods suffer from being too slow or too inaccurate when analyzing large datasets. We have recently developed a novel supertree called FLIPCUT supertrees, which is very swift and computes supertrees of good quality. In this project, we will further advance this methods so that supertree quality is on a par with the current supertree “gold standard” Matrix Representation with Parsimony (MRP). At the same time, we want to preserve the extraordinary swiftness of the method. We will then integrate the resulting method into a divide-and-conquer approach for phylogenetic reconstruction, and evaluate it against “pure” ML programs.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants