Department of Systems and Control

Jožef Stefan Institute

Phylogenetic reconstruction using Gaussian processes - TRACE

Principal investigator:

Prof. Dr. Juš Kocijan

Duration:

January 1, 2020 – December 31, 2022

Funding:

International cooperation between the Republic of Slovenia and the Republic of Croatia BI-HR/20-21-021

Abstract:

TRACE aimes at the application of modern computational methods used in engineering and computer sciences for modelling in biological sciences. In biology, phylogenetics is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among individuals or groups of organisms. These relationships are discovered through phylogenetic inference methods that evaluate observed heritable traits, such as DNA sequences or morphology under a model of evolution of these traits. The result of these analyses is a phylogeny that is a diagrammatic hypothesis about the history of the evolutionary relationships of a group of organisms. The tips of a phylogenetic tree can be living organisms or fossils, and represent the end, or the present, in an evolutionary lineage. Phylogenetic analyses have become central to understanding biodiversity, evolution, ecology, and genomes. At present, these analyses are pursued with modern computation methods. Within this project, we are trying to link modelling with Gaussian processes with DNA-based phylogenetic reconstruction.