Question

Which of the following is incorrect about Bootstrapping?

(a) It is a statistical technique that tests the sampling errors of a phylogenetic tree

(b) It does the tests by repeatedly sampling trees through slightly perturbed datasets

(c) A newly constructed tree is not biased at all

(d) The robustness of the original tree can be assessed here

This question was addressed to me during an interview.

The origin of the question is Phylogenetic Tree Evaluation in division Phylogenetic Tree Construction Methods and Programs of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Right choice is (c) A newly constructed tree is not biased at all

Easy explanation: The rationale for bootstrapping is that a newly constructed tree is possibly biased owing to incorrect alignment or chance fluctuations of distance measurements. To determine the robustness or reproducibility of the current tree, trees are repeatedly constructed with slightly perturbed alignments that have some random fluctuations introduced.