GPTree Cluster: phylogenetic tree cluster generator in the context of supertree inference.

Abstract

For many years, evolutionary and molecular biologists have been working with phylogenetic supertrees, which are oriented acyclic graph structures. In the standard approaches, supertrees are obtained by concatenating a set of phylogenetic trees defined on different but overlapping sets of taxa (i.e. species). More recent approaches propose alternative solutions for supertree inference. The testing of new metrics for comparing supertrees and adapting clustering algorithms to overlapping phylogenetic trees with different numbers of leaves requires large amounts of data. In this context, designing a new approach and developing a computer program to generate phylogenetic tree clusters with different numbers of overlapping leaves are key elements to advance research on phylogenetic supertrees and evolution. The main objective of the project is to propose a new approach to simulate clusters of phylogenetic trees defined on different, but mutually overlapping, sets of taxa, with biological events. The proposed generator can be used to generate a certain number of clusters of phylogenetic trees in Newick format with a variable number of leaves and with a defined level of overlap between trees in clusters. A Python script version 3.7, called GPTree Cluster, which implements the discussed approach, is freely available at: https://github.com/tahiri-lab/GPTree/tree/GPTreeCluster.