Abstract
Hemoglobin is one of the most ubiquitous proteins in life. It has functions critical for life, such as involvement in intracellular transport within the electron transport chain. With a focus on Human Betaglobin, phylogenetic trees were made with representatives from various forms of life. We hypothesized that Human Beta globulin will be well conserved throughout mammals, birds and amphibians; with mammals and amphibian being more closely related to birds, and most distant from each other. The furthest from Human Beta globulin will be the nematode, yeast, and bacterial genes. These two trees were made using maximum likelihood and maximum parsimony analysis. Maximum likelihood is typically regarded as a superior statistical technique to maximum parsimony. However, in this analysis the maximum likelihood tree completely separates the mammal sequences and places, for example, the mouse more closely related to the tsetse fly than to the human betaglobin. In this analysis maximum parsimony resulted in a phylogenetic tree closer to what is expected, with mammals more closely related to other mammals, and it supported our hypothesis.
Group "B is for Bioinformatics"
Bioinformatics 479/548
Fall 2011, Eastern Michigan University
Fall 2011, Eastern Michigan University