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1 September 2016 Using the Free Program MEGA to Build Phylogenetic Trees from Molecular Data
Lucas Newman, Amanda L. J. Duffus, Cathy Lee
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Abstract

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.

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Lucas Newman, Amanda L. J. Duffus, and Cathy Lee "Using the Free Program MEGA to Build Phylogenetic Trees from Molecular Data," The American Biology Teacher 78(7), 608-612, (1 September 2016). https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2016.78.7.608
Published: 1 September 2016
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KEYWORDS
evolutionary trees
maximum likelihood
MEGA
molecular data
neighbor joining
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