Using the Free Program MEGA to Build Phylogenetic Trees from Molecular Data

Building evolutionary trees can be an excellent way for students to see how different gene sequences or organisms are related to one another. Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis (MEGA) software is a free package that lets anyone build evolutionary trees in a user-friendly setup. There are sever...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American biology teacher 2016-09, Vol.78 (7), p.608-612
Main Authors: Newman, Lucas, Duffus, Amanda L. J., Lee, Cathy
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Evolution
Evolutionary genetics
evolutionary trees
Genetics
maximum likelihood
MEGA
molecular data
neighbor joining
Phylogenetics
Science education
Software
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Summary:Building evolutionary trees can be an excellent way for students to see how different gene sequences or organisms are related to one another. Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis (MEGA) software is a free package that lets anyone build evolutionary trees in a user-friendly setup. There are several options to choose from when building trees from molecular data in MEGA, but the most commonly used are neighbor joining and maximum likelihood, both of which give good estimates on the relationship between different molecular sequences. In this article, we describe how to collect data from GenBank, insert the data into a text editor, import the data into MEGA, and use the dataset to create phylogenetic trees.
ISSN:0002-7685
1938-4211
DOI:10.1525/abt.2016.78.7.608