Phylogenetic signal in nucleotide data from seed plants: Implications for resolving the seed plant tree of life

Effects of taxonomic sampling and conflicting signal on the inference of seed plant trees supported in previous molecular analyses were explored using 13 single-locus data sets. Changing the number of taxa in single-locus analyses had limited effects on log likelihood differences between the gnepine (Gnetales plus Pinaceae) and gnetifer (Gnetales plus conifers) trees. Distinguishing among these trees also was little affected by the use of different substitution parameters. The 13-locus combined data set was partitioned into nine classes based on substitution rates. Sites evolving at intermediate rates had the best likelihood and parsimony scores on gnepine trees, and those evolving at the fastest rates had the best parsimony scores on Gnetales-sister trees (Gnetales plus other seed plants). When the fastest evolving sites were excluded from parsimony analyses, well-supported gnepine trees were inferred from the combined data and from each genomic partition. When all sites were included, Gnetales-sister trees were inferred from the combined data, whereas a different tree was inferred from each genomic partition. Maximum likelihood trees from the combined data and from each genomic partition were well-supported gnepine trees. A preliminary stratigraphic test highlights the poor fit of Gnetales-sister trees to the fossil data

IMPACT OF PHARMACIST LED HYPERTENSION MANAGEMENT

Objective: The study objective was to analyze the effect of pharmacist interventions in improving blood pressure control. Methods: The prospective interventional study was conducted on a population who were known hypertensive for more than 2 years. They were randomly categorized into two groups, interventional group and usual care group. Pharmaceutical care, involving telephonic follow-up, adherence analysis, patient education was given in the former group in a time interval of 2 months for about 12 months while the later was on regular therapeutical care only. Blood pressure was monitored in each follow-up. The difference in control of blood pressure was measured in terms of mm/Hg unit. The improvement in the measure from start and end of the study was analyzed within the group and between the groups. Results: Lowered blood pressure was observed in both the groups in the end of study. But statistically significant difference was seen in interventional group compared to the other. Involvement of pharmacist led care helped in achievement of AHA goal. Conclusions: Including clinical pharmacist in a health-care team can provide unerring therapeutic regimen to patients thereby their health-care outcome

Assessing among-locus variation in the inference of seed plant phylogeny

Large multilocus analyses can greatly reduce sampling error in phylogenetic estimates and help resolve difficult phylogenetic questions. Yet conventional multilocus analyses may be confounded by variation in the phylogenetic signal or processes of evolution among loci. We used nonparametric bootstrapping methods to examine locus-specific variation within a 12-locus seed plant data set and to examine the effects of this variation on estimates of seed plant phylogeny. The observed maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony bootstrap support from phylogenetic analyses of sites within single loci often notably differs from the bootstrap support obtained by sampling an equal number of sites from the concatenated 12-locus data set. This indicates heterogeneity among loci in the phylogenetic inference, and the differences among loci are not explained by the distribution of fast and slowly evolving sites. Bootstrap analyses that resample loci with replacement, rather than sampling individual sites with replacement, reveal extensive sampling variance among loci. The results suggest that seed plant phylogenetic analyses may not be robust to sampling error when only 12 loci are used and indicate a need for further investigation into the causes of the locus-specific variation. © 2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved

Assessing systematic error in the inference of seed plant phylogeny

We used parametric bootstrapping to assess the performance of maximum parsimony and maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses of a 12-locus seed plant data set. Evidence of biases in maximum parsimony analyses of single-locus data sets may explain some of the locus-specific variation among DNA-based hypotheses of seed plant phylogeny. In particular, there is strong evidence of bias in maximum parsimony analyses, especially of plastid loci, that favors placing Gnetales sister to other seed plants. We concatenated simulated single-locus data sets to examine biases in analyses of a 12-locus data set in which each locus is simulated with different substitution parameters and branch lengths. Maximum parsimony analyses of the simulated 12-locus data set also show evidence of biases in favor of recovering trees with Gnetales sister to other seed plants and against recovering anthophyte, gnepine, and gnetifer trees. These biases are most evident in analyses that include the fastest-evolving characters. In the maximum likelihood analyses of the simulated 12-locus data sets, there is evidence of a bias against recovering the anthophyte hypothesis. Otherwise, there is little evidence that the heterogeneous branch lengths and substitution processes among loci influence the results from maximum likelihood phylogenetic analyses. © 2007 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved