Molecular Biology and Evolution, Vol 8, 356-365, Copyright © 1991 by Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution
J Lin and M Nei
The relative efficiencies of the maximum-parsimony (MP), UPGMA, and
neighbor-joining (NJ) methods in obtaining the correct tree (topology) for
restriction-site and restriction-fragment data were studied by computer
simulation. In this simulation, six DNA sequences of 16,000 nucleotides
were assumed to evolve following a given model tree. The recognition
sequences of 20 different six-base restriction enzymes were used to
identify the restriction sites of the DNA sequences generated. The
restriction-site data and restriction-fragment data thus obtained were used
to reconstruct a phylogenetic tree, and the tree obtained was compared with
the model tree. This process was repeated 300 times. The results obtained
indicate that when the rate of nucleotide substitution is constant the
probability of obtaining the correct tree (Pc) is generally higher in the
NJ method than in the MP method. However, if we use the average topological
deviation from the model tree (dT) as the criterion of comparison, the NJ
and MP methods are nearly equally efficient. When the rate of nucleotide
substitution varies with evolutionary lineage, the NJ method is better than
the MP method, whether Pc or dT is used as the criterion of comparison.
With 500 nucleotides and when the number of nucleotide substitutions per
site was very small, restriction-site data were, contrary to our
expectation, more useful than sequence data. Restriction-fragment data were
less useful than restriction-site data, except when the sequence divergence
was very small. UPGMA seems to be useful only when the rate of nucleotide
substitution is constant and sequence divergence is high.
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Relative efficiencies of the maximum-parsimony and distance-matrix methods of phylogeny construction for restriction data
Center for Demographic and Population Genetics, University of Texas Health Science Center, Houston.
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