Journal
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
Volume 17, Issue 10, Pages 1435-1445Publisher
OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a026244
Keywords
molecular phylogeny; secondary structure; small-subunit RNA; cirripede; Crustacea
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We present a new method using nucleic acid secondary structure to assess phylogenetic relationships among species. In this method, which we term molecular morphometrics, the measurable structural parameters of the molecules (geometrical features, bond energies, base composition, etc.) are used as specific characters to construct a phylogenetic tree. This method relies both on traditional morphological comparison and on molecular sequence comparison. Applied to the phylogenetic analysis of Cirripedia. molecular morphometrics supports the most recent morphological analyses arguing for the monophyly of Cirripedia sensu stricto (Thoracica + Rhizocephala + Acrothoracica). As a proof, a classical multiple alignment was also performed, either using or not using the structural information to realign the sequence segments considered in the molecular morphometrics analysis. These methods yielded the same tree topology as the direct use of structural characters as a phylogenetic signal. By taking into account the secondary structure of nucleic acids, the new method allows investigators to use the regions in which multiple alignments are barely reliable because of a large number of insertions and deletions. It thus appears to be complementary to classical primary sequence analysis in phylogenetic studies.
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