Supercomputer Aids Phylogenetics Research Tool Development

By Matthew Dublin

Researchers at the Texas Advanced Computing Center are using the Ranger supercomputer to streamline software that will better enable computers to draw evolutionary trees.

The group, led by Tandy Warnow, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin, developed a novel divided and conquer algorithmic approach called SATé: Simultaneous Alignment and Tree Estimation.

"By dividing a really big data set that's hard to align into small data sets that are closely related, you can get good estimates on each subset and then get an alignment on the full data set," says Warnow.

SATé uses a statistical method to provide a maximum likelihood score and then repeats the process of alignment and tree-building until a tree with the highest likelihood score is reached. In reports published in PLoS Currents and Systematic Biology, SATé has been shown to work as well as other commonly used alignment and tree estimation methods, only faster and with greater accuracy.

Warnow and her colleagues have already employed SATé to aid the ongoing research of evolutionary biologists such as the Smithsonian Institute's Michael Bruan, who is studying the evolutionary history of flightless birds, known as "ratites." Braun discovered through DNA analysis that an ancient family of birds found in South American called "tinamou" was one of the most closely related groups to emus and ostriches, and that they could fly. SATé helped to confirm the evolutionary relationship that Braun identified.