Biologists estimate that there are about 5 to 100 million species of organisms living on Earth today. Evidence from morphological, biochemical, and gene sequence data suggests that all organisms on Earth are genetically related, and the genealogical relationships of living things can be represented by a vast evolutionary tree, the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life then represents the phylogeny of organisms, i. e., the history of organismal lineages as they change through time.
Every living organism contains DNA, RNA, and proteins. Closely related organisms generally have a high degree of agreement in the molecular structure of these substances, while the molecules of organisms distantly related usually show a pattern of dissimilarity. Molecular phylogeny uses such data to build a "relationship tree" that shows the probable evolution of various organisms. Not until recent decades, however, has it been possible to isolate and identify these molecular structures.
phylogenetics is the study of evolutionary relatedness among various groups of organisms (for example, species or populations), which is discovered through molecular sequencing data and morphological data matrices. In other word, Phylogenetics, the science of phylogeny, is one part of the larger field of systematics, which also includes taxonomy. Taxonomy is the science of naming and classifying the diversity of organisms Molecular phylogeny is the use of the structure of molecules to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. The result of a molecular phylogenetic analysis is expressed in a so-called phylogenetic tree.
The evolutionary connections between organisms are represented graphically through phylogenetic trees. Due to the fact that evolution takes place over long periods of time that cannot be observed directly, biologists must reconstruct phylogenies by inferring the evolutionary relationships among present-day organisms.
Application of the techniques that make this possible can be seen in the very limited field of human genetics, such as the ever more popular use of genetic testing to determine a child's paternity, as well as the emergence of a new branch of criminal forensics focused on genetic evidence.
The effect on traditional scientific classification schemes in the biological sciences has been dramatic as well. Work that was once immensely labor- and materials-intensive can now be done quickly and easily, leading to yet another source of information becoming available for systematic and taxonomic appraisal. This particular kind of data has become so popular that taxonomical schemes based solely on molecular data may be encountered. Proponents even claim that taxonomy was previously based on morphology alone, which of course is utter fable.
For additional information on phylogenetics, see list of Phylogenetics Resources on the Internet.
Phylogeny and Reconstructing Phylogenetic Trees: http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/Phyltree/cover.html
the CBRG and Department of Statistics Phylogeny tutorial: http://www.compbio.ox.ac.uk/tutorials/phylogeny/
TUTORIAL: PHYLOGENETIC ANALYSIS USING PARSIMONY:http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~psgendb/GDE/phylogeny/parsimony/phylip.parsimony.html
PHYLIP: http://www.umanitoba.ca/afs/plant_science/psgendb/doc/Phylip/main.html
An Introduction to Molecular Phylogeny: http://bibiserv.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/gcb04/tutorials/hoef-emden/GCB04Tut.pdf
How to make a phylogenetic tree: http://www.hiv.lanl.gov/content/sequence/TUTORIALS/TREE_TUTORIAL/Treetutorial.html
Phylogenetic Trees: http://cnx.org/content/m11052/latest/
Phylogeny by Ron Shamir: http://www.cs.tau.ac.il/~rshamir/algmb/01/scribe08/lec08.pdf
Introduction to Phylogeny: http://www.utm.edu/departments/cens/biology/rirwin/391/391Phylog.htm
Lecturer notes on Phylogeny: http://www.sbc.su.se/~bens/course_material/phylocourse1/lecture2.pdf
Principles and Practice of Phylogenetic Systematics:http://www.faculty.biol.ttu.edu/Strauss/Phylogenetics/LectureNotes.htm
Inferring phylogenetic trees: http://www.cis.hut.fi/Opinnot/T-61.6070/slides2008/pres_6070.pdf
Lecture Notes
Chapter 1 - The Diversity, Classification, and Evolution of Vertebrates:http://academic.emporia.edu/mooredwi/nathist/chap1.htm
Algorithms for Phylogenetic Reconstructions:http://lectures.molgen.mpg.de/Algorithmische_Bioinformatik_WS0405/phylogeny_script.pdf
Phylogeny.fr is a free, simple to use web service dedicated to reconstructing and analysing phylogenetic relationships between molecular sequences. Phylogeny.fr runs and connects various bioinformatics programs to reconstruct a robust phylogenetic tree from a set of sequences. For more detail : http://www.phylogeny.fr/version2_cgi/index.cgi
A Brief Tutorial on Phylogenetics
http://bioss.ac.uk/~dirk/talks/tutorial_phylogenetics.pdf
A Brief Tutorial on Phylogenetics Human Rabbit Chicken
http://bioss.ac.uk/~dirk/talks/psnup_tutorial_phylogenetics.pdf
Phylogenetic Tree Computation Tutorial Overview
http://pga.lbl.gov/Workshop/April2002/lectures/Olken.pdf
MrBayes: A program for the Bayesian inference of phylogeny
http://golab.unl.edu/teaching/SBseminar/manual.pdf
Web sites providing software for the construction of phylogenetic trees
