Question

The second step in phylogenetic analysis is to construct sequence alignment. This is probably the most critical step in the procedure because it establishes positional correspondence in evolution.

(a) True

(b) False

This question was posed to me by my college professor while I was bunking the class.

The above asked question is from Gene Phylogeny Versus Species Phylogeny topic in chapter Molecular Phylogenetics of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Right answer is (a) True

The best explanation: Incorrect alignment leads to systematic errors in the final tree or even a completely wrong tree. For that reason, it is essential that the sequences are correctly aligned. Multiple state-of-the-art alignment programs such as T-Coffee should be used. The alignment results from multiple sources should be inspected and compared carefully to identify the most reasonable one. Automatic sequence alignments almost always contain errors and should be further edited or refined if necessary.