title: Phylogenetic analyses: a brief introduction to methods and their application.
abstract: Phylogenetic analysis of molecular sequence data plays an increasingly important role in clinical medicine, both in the emerging field of molecular epidemiology and in the rational design of new therapeutic agents. The aims of this review are to introduce some of the methods used to construct phylogenetic trees, to illustrate some of the pitfalls that can introduce artifactual results and to speculate on the long-term importance of this area of computational biology in clinical medicine.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomolecular Sciences and Biotechnology, University of Milan, Via Celoria 26, 20133 Milano, Italy. david.horner@unimi.it
authors.forename: David S
authors.initials: DS
authors.lastname: Horner
authors.forename: Graziano
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Pesole
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D015510:Clinical Medicine; D015195:Drug Design; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D022761:Gene Transfer, Horizontal; D006801:Humans; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D010802:Phylogeny; D016415:Sequence Alignment; D017385:Sequence Homology; D012984:Software