251 research outputs found
The genome of the medieval Black Death agent (extended abstract)
The genome of a 650 year old Yersinia pestis bacteria, responsible for the
medieval Black Death, was recently sequenced and assembled into 2,105 contigs
from the main chromosome. According to the point mutation record, the medieval
bacteria could be an ancestor of most Yersinia pestis extant species, which
opens the way to reconstructing the organization of these contigs using a
comparative approach. We show that recent computational paleogenomics methods,
aiming at reconstructing the organization of ancestral genomes from the
comparison of extant genomes, can be used to correct, order and complete the
contig set of the Black Death agent genome, providing a full chromosome
sequence, at the nucleotide scale, of this ancient bacteria. This sequence
suggests that a burst of mobile elements insertions predated the Black Death,
leading to an exceptional genome plasticity and increase in rearrangement rate.Comment: Extended abstract of a talk presented at the conference JOBIM 2013,
https://colloque.inra.fr/jobim2013_eng/. Full paper submitte
The inference of gene trees with species trees
Molecular phylogeny has focused mainly on improving models for the
reconstruction of gene trees based on sequence alignments. Yet, most
phylogeneticists seek to reveal the history of species. Although the histories
of genes and species are tightly linked, they are seldom identical, because
genes duplicate, are lost or horizontally transferred, and because alleles can
co-exist in populations for periods that may span several speciation events.
Building models describing the relationship between gene and species trees can
thus improve the reconstruction of gene trees when a species tree is known, and
vice-versa. Several approaches have been proposed to solve the problem in one
direction or the other, but in general neither gene trees nor species trees are
known. Only a few studies have attempted to jointly infer gene trees and
species trees. In this article we review the various models that have been used
to describe the relationship between gene trees and species trees. These models
account for gene duplication and loss, transfer or incomplete lineage sorting.
Some of them consider several types of events together, but none exists
currently that considers the full repertoire of processes that generate gene
trees along the species tree. Simulations as well as empirical studies on
genomic data show that combining gene tree-species tree models with models of
sequence evolution improves gene tree reconstruction. In turn, these better
gene trees provide a better basis for studying genome evolution or
reconstructing ancestral chromosomes and ancestral gene sequences. We predict
that gene tree-species tree methods that can deal with genomic data sets will
be instrumental to advancing our understanding of genomic evolution.Comment: Review article in relation to the "Mathematical and Computational
Evolutionary Biology" conference, Montpellier, 201
Efficient Exploration of the Space of Reconciled Gene Trees
Gene trees record the combination of gene level events, such as duplication,
transfer and loss, and species level events, such as speciation and extinction.
Gene tree-species tree reconciliation methods model these processes by drawing
gene trees into the species tree using a series of gene and species level
events. The reconstruction of gene trees based on sequence alone almost always
involves choosing between statistically equivalent or weakly distinguishable
relationships that could be much better resolved based on a putative species
tree. To exploit this potential for accurate reconstruction of gene trees the
space of reconciled gene trees must be explored according to a joint model of
sequence evolution and gene tree-species tree reconciliation.
Here we present amalgamated likelihood estimation (ALE), a probabilistic
approach to exhaustively explore all reconciled gene trees that can be
amalgamated as a combination of clades observed in a sample of trees. We
implement ALE in the context of a reconciliation model, which allows for the
duplication, transfer and loss of genes. We use ALE to efficiently approximate
the sum of the joint likelihood over amalgamations and to find the reconciled
gene tree that maximizes the joint likelihood.
We demonstrate using simulations that gene trees reconstructed using the
joint likelihood are substantially more accurate than those reconstructed using
sequence alone. Using realistic topologies, branch lengths and alignment sizes,
we demonstrate that ALE produces more accurate gene trees even if the model of
sequence evolution is greatly simplified. Finally, examining 1099 gene families
from 36 cyanobacterial genomes we find that joint likelihood-based inference
results in a striking reduction in apparent phylogenetic discord, with 24%, 59%
and 46% percent reductions in the mean numbers of duplications, transfers and
losses.Comment: Manuscript accepted pending revision in Systematic Biolog
Genome-scale phylogenetic analysis finds extensive gene transfer among Fungi
Although the role of lateral gene transfer is well recognized in the
evolution of bacteria, it is generally assumed that it has had less influence
among eukaryotes. To explore this hypothesis we compare the dynamics of genome
evolution in two groups of organisms: Cyanobacteria and Fungi. Ancestral
genomes are inferred in both clades using two types of methods. First, Count, a
gene tree unaware method that models gene duplications, gains and losses to
explain the observed numbers of genes present in a genome. Second, ALE, a more
recent gene tree-aware method that reconciles gene trees with a species tree
using a model of gene duplication, loss, and transfer. We compare their merits
and their ability to quantify the role of transfers, and assess the impact of
taxonomic sampling on their inferences. We present what we believe is
compelling evidence that gene transfer plays a significant role in the
evolution of Fungi
La fin d'un tout petit monde
Les récentes mesures d’empreinte environnementale dans les labos pointent de façon récurrente les déplacements en avion des chercheurs comme la principale source d'émissions de gaz à effet de serre dans l'activité scientifique. D'autant plus en informatique, où les congrès sont centraux dans le système de publication. Nous proposons quelques pistes, qu'il est possible d'implémenter à tous les niveaux, individuel, collectif ou institutionnel, pour tendre vers des pratiques plus soutenables. Au risque, qui est peut-être une chance, de changer plus profondément notre manière de voir et d’orienter la recherche scientifique
Guided genome halving: provably optimal solutions provide good insights into the preduplication ancestral genome of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
International audienceWe present theoretical and practical advances on the Guided Genome Halving problem, a combinatorial optimisation problem which aims at proposing ancestral configurations of extant genomes when one of them has undergone a whole genome duplication. We provide a lower bound on the optimal solution, devise a heuristic algorithm based on subgraph identification, and apply it to yeast gene order data. On some instances, the computation of the bound yields a proof that the obtained solutions are optimal. We analyse a set of optimal solutions, compare them with a manually curated standard ancestor, showing that on yeast data, results coming from different methodologies are largely convergent: the optimal solutions are distant of at most one rearrangement from the reference
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