Method

Visualization of the phylogenetic content of five genomes using dekapentagonal maps

Olga Zhaxybayeva¹, Lutz Hamel², Jason Raymond³ and J Peter Gogarten¹

¹Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-3125, USA

²Department of Computer Science and Statistics, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI 02881, USA

³Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1604, USA

author email corresponding author email

Genome Biology 2004, 5:R20doi:10.1186/gb-2004-5-3-r20

Published:	16 February 2004

Subject areas: Bioinformatics, Evolution

Abstract

The methods presented here summarize phylogenetic relationships of genomes in visually appealing and informative figures. Dekapentagonal maps depict phylogenetic information for orthologous genes present in five genomes, and provide a pre-screen for putatively horizontally transferred genes. If the majority of individual gene phylogenies are unresolved, bipartition histograms provide a means of uncovering and analyzing the plurality consensus. Analyses of genomes representing five photosynthetic bacterial phyla and of the prokaryotic contributions to the eukaryotic cell illustrate the utility of the methods.