Search and validation of short genome-wide biomarkers for bacterial biological phylogenies

• Authors: Max H. Garzon;Tit-Yee Wong
• Venue: DNA'10 Proceedings of the 16th international conference on DNA computing and molecular programming
• Year: 2010

We continue the exploration of DNA-based indexing as a universal coordinate system in DNA spaces to characterize very large groups (families, genera, and even phylla) of organisms on a uniform biomarker reference system, a comprehensive "Atlas of Life", as it is or as it could be on earth. We provide a second confirmation that DNA noncrosshybridizing (nxh) sets can be successfully applied to infer ab-initio phylogenetic trees by providing a method to measure distances among entire genomes indexed by sets of short oligonucleotides selected so as to minimize crosshybridization. These phylogenies are solidly established and well accepted in bacterial biology, albeit done by analyses of relatively small segments of highly conserved rybozomic DNA. Second, it is further demonstrated that DNA indexing does provide novel and principled genome-wide predictions into the phylogenesis of organisms hitherto inaccessible by current methods, such as a prediction of the origin of the Salmonella plasmid 50 as being acquired horizontally, likely from some bacteria somewhat related to Yesinia. We conclude with some discussion about the scalability and potential of this method to develop a comprehensive tree of life based on genome-wide methods.