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Cells, Microbes & Viruses / Re: 'When' would you use nucleotides to construct phylogenetic trees?
« on: 30/07/2022 02:01:06 »
You might use protein amino-acid sequences when:
- Temperatures are so high that fossil DNA has been corrupted beyond our ability to read, but there is some intact protein available.
- When you are looking for functional changes in a protein, rather than non-functional genetic changes in the protein.
- But untangling and reading the sequence of a protein is not easy, and different techniques need to be developed for every different protein
In most cases, if you can recover intact DNA, you would use it, because:
- You can read the sequence of every protein in the same way, without having to develop a new technique for every protein
- You can read changes in "non-protein-coding" DNA, which often changes more rapidly than protein-coding segments, allowing the researcher to chart even very close family relationships
- Techniques for reading DNA have accelerated exponentially over the past few decades, making it the cheapest and fastest method available
- COVID-19 has resulted in the deployment of far more PCR machines and DNA sequencers than ever before...
- If you can't read nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA will also give some clues (there are more copies of mitochondrial DNA in each cell than nuclear DNA)
- Temperatures are so high that fossil DNA has been corrupted beyond our ability to read, but there is some intact protein available.
- When you are looking for functional changes in a protein, rather than non-functional genetic changes in the protein.
- But untangling and reading the sequence of a protein is not easy, and different techniques need to be developed for every different protein
In most cases, if you can recover intact DNA, you would use it, because:
- You can read the sequence of every protein in the same way, without having to develop a new technique for every protein
- You can read changes in "non-protein-coding" DNA, which often changes more rapidly than protein-coding segments, allowing the researcher to chart even very close family relationships
- Techniques for reading DNA have accelerated exponentially over the past few decades, making it the cheapest and fastest method available
- COVID-19 has resulted in the deployment of far more PCR machines and DNA sequencers than ever before...
- If you can't read nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA will also give some clues (there are more copies of mitochondrial DNA in each cell than nuclear DNA)
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