David Maddison (beetle at ag.arizona.edu) wrote:
: Another way to put it is that I would like to know if this
: collection of sequences is monophyletic on the grand tree of
: all gene trees, or if it is para/polyphyletic with the intervening
: sequences being of different function. While this is
: fundamentally a phylogenetic question (presuming such a
: grand tree of all gene trees exists), it is a horrendous one
: to answer in that the sequences are so divergent that
: one can't do a normal phylogenetic analysis on them - there's
: just nothing to get a hold of.
: So has anyone written about possible methods of coping with
: such problems? (Obviously some of the general
: literature on phylogenetic inference has some applicable stuff,
: but I want to know if anyone has anyone has talked about this
: specific problem, even if they have done so without presenting
: it fully as a phylogenetics problem.)
I know Russell Doolittle has written at least one article on
convergent evolution; you might try working off that (tiny) lead.
Keith Robison
Harvard University
Department of Cellular and Developmental Biology
Department of Genetics / HHMI
robison at mito.harvard.edu
