ESTIMATION OF TIME OF DIVERGENCE FROM PHYLOGENETIC STUDIES

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Abstract
Recent studies with comparative data on base sequences of homologous DNA or amino acid sequences of homologous proteins indicate that simultaneous estimation of phylogenetic structure and time of divergence is often cumbersome and time consuming. When the topology of an evolutionary tree is known, the least squares theory may be applied to obtain simple estimates of the relative time lengths for each segment of the tree under the assumption of uniform random substitutions in each segment. The method is illustrated with amino acid sequence data on various globin molecules and cytochrome c. The evolutionary significance of some of the estimates is also discussed.