Different parts of a genome can have different evolutionary histories, for example because of recombination, but comparing the resulting trees is difficult. Phylo-Movies turns a sequence of phylogenetic trees into an animation that shows which branches move and where they reconnect. In the paper, it is used to visualize a recombination breakpoint in norovirus and to explore taxa whose position is unstable across many reconstructed trees.

Phylo-Movies is a user-friendly, browser-based software tool designed to visualize dynamic genetic histories across genomes by animating structural evolutionary shifts between consecutive phylogenetic trees. The software enables researchers to identify and analyze complex genetic conflicts arising from recombination.

The project was led by PhD candidate Enes Sakalli (LBI-Netmed / University of Vienna) under the close supervision of Dr. Heiko Schmidt (Max Perutz Labs), senior author of the paper. Prof. Dr. Arndt von Haeseler, Senior Scientist at our institute and Professor Emeritus at the University of Vienna, and Simon E. Haendeler contributed to the work as co-authors.

Phylo-Movies Tool: phylo-movies
Publication in Molecular Biology and Evolution