Visualization of Genome Mosaicism

Olga Zhaxybayeva
Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, University of Connecticut

The analyses of completely sequenced genomes initiated a reassessment of 
concepts in microbial evolution. While some molecular markers were found 
to agree with one another, others conflict with each other.  I will 
present different methods we developed to assess phylogenetic content of 
genomes and illustrate their mosaicism in visually appealing graphics. 
We applied these methods to cases of intra-phylum, inter-phylum and 
inter-domain relationships. While in many instances the plurality signal 
is observed, there also are cases of conflicting signals.  These 
datasets can be further analyzed to determine if they represent cases of 
horizontal gene transfer, unrecognized paralogy, or artifacts of 
phylogenetic reconstruction.