Phylogenetic Trees Made Easy: A How-To Manual for Molecular Biologists

This text is intended to aid beginners in getting started creating phylogenetic trees from protein or nucleic acid sequence data. Although aimed at molecular and cell biologists who may not be familiar with phylogenetic or evolutionary theory, it also serves students who may be familiar with phylogenetic theory but unfamiliar with the tools used to apply that theory. The reader is led, step-by-step, through identifying sequences that are homologous to a sequence of interest, downloading those sequences from databases, creating multiple alignments, and using several different methods to construct trees.