Towards Consensus Gene Ages.

摘要: Correctly estimating the age of a gene or family is important for variety fields, including molecular evolution, comparative genomics, and phylogenetics, increasingly systems biology disease genetics. However, most studies use only point estimate gene's age, neglecting substantial uncertainty involved in this estimation. Here, we characterize by investigating effect algorithm choice on gene-age inference calculate consensus ages with attendant error distributions model eukaryotes. We 13 orthology algorithms to create datasets then around each age-call per-gene per-algorithm basis. Systematic was found be large factor suggesting that simple are not enough give reliable estimate. also different sources can affect downstream analyses, such as ontology enrichment. Our datasets, associated terms, made fully available at so researchers propagate through their analyses (geneages.org).