Marcela Reyna, Javier Villarreal

Introduction:

Bioinformatics provides a stepping stone to rebuilding our past and is a combination of

applied mathematics, computation, biology, artificial intelligence and computer science, a
way of taking our compilation of past technological advances and applying it to biology.
Within the scientific document, “Evolutionary History of Autogamy in North American
Ipomoea,” Dr. McDonald presents his ideas on the multiple origins of autogamy for the
Ipomoea. Using phylogeny, the study of origins and linage of a species, and phylogenetic
software we hope to help support Dr. McDonald in his research.

Technical Summary:

Dr. Andrew McDonald, a professor within the Biology department at the University of
Texas Pan American has requested that Dr. Andres Figueroa assist him in his research
developing the phylogenetic tree for the flower named Ipomoea nil (Morning Glory).
And so the two of us will also participate in this project, meeting regularly with Dr.
Figueroa and discussing the requirements Dr. McDonald provides us with. Specifically,
when intend on using our understanding of phylogeny, along with PAUP to build a tree
which will help in Dr. McDonald’s analysis for discovering the ancestor of the Morning
Glory. In order to accomplish this, we will be creating optimal phylogenetic trees using
two sampling methods, the first being Maximum Likelihood and the other Maximum
Parsimony. Rather than focusing on implementation of how to build a phylogenetic tree,
we will direct our attention to analyzing these sampling methods along with the
algorithms used to create these trees. We can then apply our knowledge using PAUP
(software: Phylogenetic Analysis Using Parsimony) to create an optimal phylogenetic
tree. PAUP contains implementations for such sampling methods.