DendroBLAST: Approximate Phylogenetic Trees in the Absence of Multiple Sequence Alignments
Open accessAbstract
The rapidly growing availability of genome information has created considerable demand for both fast and accurate phylogenetic inference algorithms. We present a novel method called DendroBLAST for reconstructing phylogenetic dendrograms/trees from protein sequences using BLAST. This method differs from other methods by incorporating a simple model of sequence evolution to test the effect of introducing sequence changes on the reliability of the bipartitions in the inferred tree. Using realistic simulated sequence data we demonstrate that this method produces phylogenetic trees that are more accurate than other commonly-used distance based methods though not as accurate as maximum likelihood methods from good quality multiple sequence alignments. In addition to tests on simulated data, we use DendroBLAST to generate input trees for a supertree reconstruction of the phylogeny of the Archaea. This independent analysis produces an approximate phylogeny of the Archaea that has both high precision and recall when compared to previously published analysis of the same dataset using conventional methods. Taken together these results demonstrate that approximate phylogenetic trees can be produced in the absence of multiple sequence alignments, and we propose that these trees will provide a platform for improving and informing downstream bioinformatic analysis. A web implementation of the DendroBLAST method is freely available for use at http://www.dendroblast.com/.
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The accuracy of key component algorithms of OrthoFinder has been independently assessed in this work and in dedicated publications.
“The accuracy of key component algorithms of OrthoFinder has been independently assessed in this work and in dedicated publications [5, 10, 22, 24, 33].”
From OrthoFinder: phylogenetic orthology inference for comparative genomics (2019) · cites this paper as [24]
In benchmark tests, STAG had higher accuracy than other leading methods for species tree inference, including maximum likelihood species tree inference from concatenated alignments of protein sequences, ASTRAL and NJst.
“In benchmark tests, STAG [24] had higher accuracy than other leading methods for species tree inference, including maximum likelihood species tree inference from concatenated alignments of protein sequences, ASTRAL [38] and NJst [39].”
From OrthoFinder: phylogenetic orthology inference for comparative genomics (2019) · cites this paper as [24]
The Methods and Results passages benchmark DendroBLAST, not STAG. Searches for STAG, ASTRAL, NJst, and the claimed comparison with concatenated protein alignments found no passage in this paper that evaluates STAG's accuracy against those methods. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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Cited by
Sorted by citations
OrthoFinder: phylogenetic orthology inference for comparative genomics
Emms, D. M., & Kelly, S. (2019) · Genome Biology · doi:10.1186/s13059-019-1832-y · Cited by 7,676 · see citing works
Self-citationGene gain and loss across the metazoan tree of life
Fernández, R., & Gabaldón, T. (2020) · Nature Ecology & Evolution · doi:10.1038/s41559-019-1069-x · Cited by 165 · see citing works
OrthoFinder: improved phylogenetic orthology inference with enhanced accuracy and scalability
Emms, D. M., Liu, Y., Belcher, L., Holmes, J., & Kelly, S. (2026) · Nature Methods · doi:10.1038/s41592-026-03126-6 · Cited by 25 · see citing works
Self-citation
- Authors
- Kelly, S., & Maini, P. K.
- Affiliations
- University of Oxford (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Kelly, Steven
- Venue
- PLoS ONE
- Publisher
- Public Library of Science (PLoS)
- Published
- 2013-03-15
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- e58537
- ISSN
- 1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC3598851
- OpenAlex
- W2074432684
- Cited by
- 73
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 12 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 10 · 2021: 11 · 2020: 3 · 2019: 2 · 2018: 3 · 2016: 1 · 2015: 2
- FWCI
- 0.38
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) (University of Oxford) (acceptedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Figshare (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) (University of Oxford) (submittedVersion)
- Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) (University of Oxford) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- Funders
- Directorate for Biological Sciences
- Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/D020190/1)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Fractal and DNA sequence analysis
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › RNA and protein synthesis mechanisms
- Keywords
- phylogenetic inference, BLAST, protein sequences, genome-scale phylogenomics, web application
- MeSH terms
- Algorithms, Archaea, Phylogeny, Software, Sequence Alignment, Evolution, Molecular, Archaeal Proteins, Internet, Sequence Analysis, Protein
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