Introduction
Phylogenetics is the study of the evolutionary relationships of biological entities. [1] On a molecular level, phylogenetics approaches can be used for many things, such as analyzing the relatedness of protein homologs between species, or to characterizing the evolution of a virus. Evolutionary relationships are shown in a phylogenetic tree. Phylogenetic trees can be generated from a sequence alignment. There are several alignment algorithms, such as MUSCLE and Clustl Omega. Once the alignment is done, there are also several different algorithms that construct the tree, such as the neighbor joining or maximum likelihood methods.
Results
Discussion
This tree indicates that NOG is well conserved in vertebrates. The human version of NOG is most closely related to the rate and mouse homologs, which makes sense as they are the only other mammals on the list. It was a surprise that the Xenopus tropicalis homolog was not more closely related to either of the Xenopus laevis homologs. This tree also shows that mouse and Xenopus tropicalis would make excellent model organisms based on how closely related they are to the human homolog and their relatively low cost compared to rats.