China Three Gorges University

1 ARTICLES PUBLISHED IN JoVE

JoVE Journal

Using Phylogenetic Analysis to Investigate Eukaryotic Gene Origin

Dechun Zhang^*1, Xianzhao Kan^*2, Sarah Elizabeth Huss³, Lan Jiang², Li-Qing Chen³, Yibing Hu⁴

¹Key Laboratory of Three Gorges Regional Plant Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement (CTGU)/Biotechnology Research Center, China Three Gorges University, ²The Institute of Bioinformatics, College of Life Sciences, Anhui Normal University, ³Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ⁴College of Resources & Environmental Sciences, Nanjing Agricultural University

A method of constructing a phylogenetic tree based on sequence homology of SWEETs from eukaryotes and SemiSWEETs from prokaryotes is described. Phylogenetic analysis is a useful tool for explaining the evolutionary relatedness between homologous proteins or genes from different organism groups.