NB! This dictionary is under construction
Orthology analysis
Two genes related through a speciation, orthologs, are more likely to
have the same function than are two genes originating from a
duplication, paralogs. This is because natural selection usually limits
the mutational evolution of genes, which may potentially allow the
acquisition of new functions, but most often are deleterious for the
genes original function. After a duplication, however, there is an
extra gene copy that can be mutated without compromising the original
function. Consequently, since paralogs are more likely to have evolved
different functions, the identification of orthologous genes in other
organisms, typically model organisms, provide a good predictor of
function of a gene of interest i, e.g., the human genome.
Reconciliation, reconciled tree
A reconciled tree describes a gene tree's, G, evolution inside a species tree,
S, marking genetree vertices
as speciations (occurring on vertices of S) or duplications (occurring on
edges of S; losses are
implicit). Formally a reconciled tree is a pair (G, γ) of a gene tree G and a reconciliation γ, which is
a function mapping vertices of the implicit species tree S to sets of vertices in G.
A graphic representation of a reconciled tree is shown below; the thick
line indicates the mapping γ(x)
= {u,v,w}.
