Question

What is Molecular Phylogeny? Give example.

Answer 1

Molecular phylogeny is the use of structure of molecules to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationship.The most common approach is the comparison of homologous sequences for genes using sequence alignment techniques to identify similarity that include Clustal W and T- Coffee.

Conserved sequences, such as mitochondrial DNA, are expected to accumulate mutations over time, and assuming a constant rate of mutation. Molecular phylogeny uses such data to build a "relationship tree" that shows the probable evolution of various organisms.

(i)Theapplication of molecular phylogeny is in DNA barcoding, wherein the species of an individual organism is identified using small sections of mitochondrial DNA or chloroplast DNA.

(ii)One more application is used in determining a child's paternity, known as DNA fingerprinting.