Question

In about the maximum likelihood approach, for each tree, the number of sequence changes or mutations that may have occurred to give the sequence variation is considered.

(a) True

(b) False

I had been asked this question during an interview.

My question is taken from The Maximum Likelihood Approach topic in section Phylogenetic Tree Construction Methods and Programs of Bioinformatics

Answer 1

Correct choice is (a) True

Best explanation: Because the rate of appearance of new mutations is very small, the more mutations needed to fit a tree to the data, the less likely that tree (Felsenstein 1981). The maximum likelihood method resembles the maximum parsimony method in that trees with the least number of changes will be the most likely.