par Catanzaro, Daniele
Référence Networks, 53, 2, page (112-125)
Publication Publié, 2009
Article révisé par les pairs
Résumé : Molecular phylogenetics studies the hierarchical evolutionary relationships among organisms by means of molecular data. These relationships are typically described by means of weighted trees, or phylogenies, whose leaves represent the observed organisms, internal vertices the intermediate ancestors, and edges the evolutionary relationships between pairs of organisms. Molecular phylogenetics provides several criteria for selecting one phylogeny from among plausible alternatives. Usually, such criteria can be expressed in terms of objective functions, and the phylogenies that optimize them are referred to as optimal. One of the most important criteria is the minimum evolution (ME) criterion, which states that the optimal phylogeny for a given set of organisms is the one whose sum of edge weights is minimal. Finding the phylogeny that satisfies the ME criterion involves solving an optimization problem, called the minimum evolution problem (MEP), which is notoriously NP-Hard. This article offers an overview of the MEP and discusses the different versions of it that occur in the literature. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.