Skip to main content

Practical: Multiple Sequence Alignment and building a Phylogenetic Tree using ClustalW


For building a phylogenetic tree, you need more than 2 sequences for both multiple sequence alignment and building a tree using ClustalW. 
Phylogenetic Tree in bioinformatics represents the evolutionary relationship between species. 

Follow these steps to build a tree:

These steps are for building a phylogenetic tree for p53 of 4 different species (Homo sapiens, Mus musculus, Rattus norvegiccus, Danio rario). (You can consider the protein or dna of your interest to find the relationship between any number of species). 

1) Go to NCBI homepage and select Nucleotide. And type in the search box "p53" and you will get number of hits for this query. And a number of entries for p53 in different species will be displayed.

2) Consider 4 different species (example: homo sapiens, mus musculus, rattus norvegiccus, danio rario). and retrieve FASTA format sequneces for those 4 species and paste them in a word file one by one. 


3) Open https://www.ebi.ac.uk/Tools/msa/clustalw2/ 
     (Since Clustalw2 has retired, you need to go to Clustal Omega for multiple sequence alignment and tree). and click on multiple sequence alignment first. 

4) Click on Clustal Omega and the query box will be displayed. 

5) Copy the FASTA format sequences and paste them in that query box. and click RUN. 

6) After a while, the results for multiple sequence alignment will be displayed. 

7) Go through the multiple sequence alignment file for better view and understanding of how nucleotides are related. 

8) Now, copy the job ID, which looks like 
clustalo-I20190205-151110-0669-40920939-p1m

9) Copy this Job ID and paste it on wordpad for reference. 

10) In the same webpage, there is an option for Phylogenetic Tree next to the multiple alignment. 

11) Click on Phylogenetic Tree and The tree will be displayed. 

12) The phylogenetic tree will be displayed as shown in the image below. The built tree represents the evolutionary relationship between species for p53. 



Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nanodrop

Thermofisher, Nanodrop 1000    Nanodrop is a spectrophotometer which is designed to measure the concentration of nucleic acids at 260nm and Proteins at 280nm present in a very small minute volume. It is also capable of measuring the concentrations of dsDNA, RNA, ssRNA and purified protein. Required sample size is usually 1µL. Nanodrop instruments are usually full spectrum spectrophotometer, i.e., Ultra violet and visible range wavelengths (250nm to 750nm).  Nanodrop is commonly used for the quantification of the DNA concentration and RNA concentration in a given sample. However there are many other applications which can be performed on this instrument.  It works on the principle of Spectrophotometer or Sample Retention System....  Principle of Nanodrop: "The Nanodrop works on the principle of sample retention system.. When the small volume of sample is introduced, the arm and pedestal will work together and make the sample in the form of colum...

Statistics in Flow Cytometry Data and "MFI" values

                                 The speed of the flow cytometry offers wide range of data points and data plots. Due to its sensitivity and versatility, it has been used extensively. Flow cytometer can detect up to 1000s of cells per second.. But, it should be noted that the flow cytometry also involves the statistics, its significance, calculating the fluorescence intensity..                Statistics in flow cytometry involves, total number of data points acquired, percentage population, most importantly mean and median fluorescence intensity, and others. Most of us get confused about the term "MFI", whether it means mean fluorescence intensity or median fluorescence intensity.. Truth is, both.. It means it can be described as either mean or median fluorescence intensity. Some researchers use Mean for MFI and some use Median for MFI values.  (Keep...

Compensation in Flow Cytometry (Fluorescence Spill Over Correction).

                      The term "Compensation" in flow cytometers refers to the process of correcting fluorescence spill over. The compensation matrix ensures that the fluorescence emitted is detected in a particular detector which is from the fluorescence being measured. As we all know that most of the fluorescence molecules have broad emission range. if more than one one fluorescence is selected, their emission spectra may overlap. To correct this spectral overlap in cytometry data, a mathematical matrix called compensation is used. The Intention of this article is to teach you the compensation from basic theory to practical. This example for FITC and PE fluorescence molecules shows that, Some of the FITC fluorescence is being detected in PE Detector. and Some of the PE fluorescence is being detected in FITC Detectors. Task here is to make sure that in cytometry data, FITC is in FITC detector only and PE is in PE Detector only....