Relationships between gene trees and species trees.

It is well known that a phylogenetic tree (gene tree) constructed from DNA sequences for a genetic locus does not necessarily agree with the tree that represents the actual evolutionary pathway of the species involved (species tree). One of the important factors that cause this difference is genetic polymorphism in the ancestral species. Under the assumption of neutral mutations, this problem can be studied by evaluating the probability (P) that a gene tree has the same topology as that of the species tree. When one gene (allele) is used from each of the species involved, the probability can be expressed as a simple function of Ti = ti/(2N), where ti is the evolutionary time measured in generations for the ith internodal branch of the species tree and N is the effective population size. When any of the Ti's is less than 1, the probability P becomes considerably less than 1.0. This probability cannot be substantially increased by increasing the number of alleles sampled from a locus. To increase the probability, one has to use DNA sequences from many different loci that have evolved independently of each other.

[1]  Vincent M. Sarich,et al.  Immunological Time Scale for Hominid Evolution , 1967, Science.

[2]  M. Nei,et al.  Genic variation within and between the three major races of man, Caucasoids, Negroids, and Mongoloids. , 1974, American journal of human genetics.

[3]  W. Brown,et al.  Evolutionary tree for apes and humans based on cleavage maps of mitochondrial DNA. , 1981, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[4]  J. Kingman.  On the genealogy of large populations , 1982 .

[5]  F. Tajima.  Evolutionary relationship of DNA sequences in finite populations. , 1983, Genetics.

[6]  M. Nei,et al.  Extent of protein polymosphism and the neutral mutation theory , 1984 .

[7]  M. Weiss,et al.  The η-globin gene: Its long evolutionary history in the β-globin gene family of mammals , 1984 .

[8]  G. A. Watterson.  Lines of descent and the coalescent , 1984 .

[9]  M. Nei,et al.  Gene genealogy and variance of interpopulational nucleotide differences. , 1985, Genetics.

[10]  J. Stephens,et al.  Methods for computing the standard errors of branching points in an evolutionary tree and their application to molecular data from humans and apes. , 1985, Molecular biology and evolution.

[11]  A. Hill,et al.  Evolutionary relationships of human populations from an analysis of nuclear DNA polymorphisms , 1986, Nature.

[12]  W. Brown,et al.  A comparison of the small ribosomal RNA genes from the mitochondrial DNA of the great apes and humans: sequence, structure, evolution, and phylogenetic implications. , 1986, Molecular biology and evolution.

[13]  John C. Avise,et al.  PHYLOGENETIC RELATIONSHIPS OF MITOCHONDRIAL DNA UNDER VARIOUS DEMOGRAPHIC MODELS OF SPECIATION , 1986 .

[14]  M. Nei.  Molecular Evolutionary Genetics , 1987 .

[15]  M. Stoneking,et al.  Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution , 1987, Nature.