Publish at January 10 2023 Updated November 21 2024
The discovery of genetics has made it possible to decipher, in part, the programming of life on Earth. Scientists have thus been able to understand the links, sometimes closer than expected, between different species, from bacteria to the largest animals. Phylogeny offers the possibility of making these connections and understanding them better. Phenograms or cladograms are generally used when we are interested in more than just the phenotype of a species.
The Phylogene program has become a must-have for anatomical character classification, among others, by French teachers. However, this well-adopted software does not cover the classification of molecular data. Aimed at high school students, Geniegen2 in its online or downloadable form offers the possibility of analyzing various DNA sequences. Some of these are already available in the application, such as :
Exercises created by other teachers are also available for educational use. Teachers who have prepared assignments can upload them as .edi, .fasta and .aln files (the format used by Phylogene).
Once the sequences have been loaded, students can then compare those selected and view the whole in a phenogram or similarity/distance matrix. This function can be hidden if the aim is for learners to create the tree themselves. Simply add an .nt before the extension, and the possibility disappears.
The software uses two types of algorithms: UPGMA (also used by Phylogene) and WPGMA. You can switch from one to the other using the options menu. As the program uses many colors, there is a setting to create a visual that will be easier to follow for color-blind students.
Other functions enable you to identify the abbreviations used in a table or, by right-clicking, to rename a combination, obtain information or even search for it on BLAST, an American site inventorying sequences held by the National Library of Medicine.
A complete program, with an aesthetic that is more functional than aesthetic, which nevertheless provides the opportunity to design real teaching modules tackling the question of phenotypes and DNA analysis.
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