Phylogenetic Trees and Networks Reduce to Phylogenies on Binary States: Does It Furnish an Explanation to the Robustness of Phylogenetic Trees against Lateral Transfers?

Marc Thuillard (1) , Didier Fraix-Burnet (2)

1 La Colline
2 IPAG - Institut de Planétologie et d'Astrophysique de Grenoble

This article presents an innovative approach to phylogenies based on the reduction of multistate characters to binary-state characters. We show that the reduction to binary characters’ approach can be applied to both character- and distance-based phylogenies and provides a unifying framework to explain simply and intuitively the similarities and differences between distance- and character-based phylogenies. Building on these results, this article gives a possible explanation on why phylogenetic trees obtained from a distance matrix or a set of characters are often quite reasonable despite lateral transfers of genetic material between taxa. In the presence of lateral transfers, outer planar networks furnish a better description of evolution than phylogenetic trees. We present a polynomial-time reconstruction algorithm for perfect outer planar networks with a fixed number of states, characters, and lateral transfers.

Mots clés: phylogenetic trees; phylogenetic networks; outer planar network; lateral transfer; multistate characters

Domaines: Bio-informatique [q-bio.QM]

Marc Thuillard, Didier Fraix-Burnet. Phylogenetic Trees and Networks Reduce to Phylogenies on Binary States: Does It Furnish an Explanation to the Robustness of Phylogenetic Trees against Lateral Transfers?. Evolutionary Bioinformatics, 2015, 11, pp.213-221. ⟨10.4137/EBo.s28158⟩. ⟨hal-01223450⟩