The Tree with Many Branches

Book excerpt: Want to build an evolutionary tree? Here’s your chance to learn how. The field of bioinformatics was born out of the need to manage, analyze, and examine raw genomic data in meaningful and exciting ways, such as the discipline of computational phylogenetics would provide. The evolutionary inferences reached among the several peer-reviewed articles contained in this book are neither novel nor breakthrough. However, it is in the application of computational techniques, experiment design, and probabilistic models where this research finds a stronghold. As a matter of practicality, the original manuscripts have been edited for a broader audience due to its highly technical language. The essays compiled in these pages have undergone a facelift, from their original scientific format into a more reader-friendly layout, as to better accommodate two different perspectives – both experts and non-experts alike.