Building Phylogenetic Trees from Molecular Data with MEGA

Phylogenetic analysis is sometimes regarded as being an intimidating, complex process that requires expertise and years of experience. In fact, it is a fairly straightforward process that can be learned quickly and applied effectively. This Protocol describes the several steps required to produce a phylogenetic tree from molecular data for novices. In the example illustrated here, the program MEGA is used to implement all those steps, thereby eliminating the need to learn several programs, and to deal with multiple file formats from one step to another (Tamura K, Peterson D, Peterson N, Stecher G, Nei M, Kumar S. 2011. MEGA5: molecular evolutionary genetics analysis using maximum likelihood, evolutionary…