Phylogenetic information complexity: Is testing a tree easier than finding it?

dc.creatorSteel, Mike
dc.creatorSzekely, Laszlo
dc.creatorMossel, Elchanan
dc.date2008-07-10
dc.date.accessioned2026-07-07T09:49:49Z
dc.date.available2026-07-07T09:49:49Z
dc.descriptionPhylogenetic trees describe the evolutionary history of a group of present-day species from a common ancestor. These trees are typically reconstructed from aligned DNA sequence data. In this paper we analytically address the following question: is the amount of sequence data required to accurately reconstruct a tree significantly more than the amount required to test whether or not a candidate tree was the `true' tree? By `significantly', we mean that the two quantities behave the same way as a function of the number of species being considered. We prove that, for a certain type of model, the amount of information required is not significantly different; while for another type of model, the information required to test a tree is independent of the number of leaves, while that required to reconstruct it grows with this number. Our results combine probabilistic and combinatorial arguments.
dc.description15 pages, 3 figures
dc.identifierhttps://arxiv.org/abs/0807.1756
dc.identifierhttp://arxiv.org/abs/0807.1756
dc.identifier.urihttp://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/164727
dc.subjectPopulations and Evolution
dc.subjectQuantitative Methods
dc.titlePhylogenetic information complexity: Is testing a tree easier than finding it?
dc.typetext

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