Molecular phylogeny
We have been discussing how changes in the DNA during cell division would lead to changes
in the proteins that are made from this new DNA. Another point that has been made is that
these changes would accumulate from one generation to the next. Could this be used to
trace the changes in DNA backwards in time and find out where each change diverged
from the other? Molecular phylogeny does exactly this. This approach is based on the idea
that organisms which are more distantly related will accumulate a greater number of
differences in their DNA. Such studies trace the evolutionary relationships and it has been
highly gratifying to find that the relationships among different organisms shown by molecular
phylogeny match the classification scheme
We have been discussing how changes in the DNA during cell division would lead to changes
in the proteins that are made from this new DNA. Another point that has been made is that
these changes would accumulate from one generation to the next. Could this be used to
trace the changes in DNA backwards in time and find out where each change diverged
from the other? Molecular phylogeny does exactly this. This approach is based on the idea
that organisms which are more distantly related will accumulate a greater number of
differences in their DNA. Such studies trace the evolutionary relationships and it has been
highly gratifying to find that the relationships among different organisms shown by molecular
phylogeny match the classification scheme
No comments:
Post a Comment