A preliminary study on a new similarity measure for phylogenetic trees

Abstract

Comparing phylogenetic trees is a crucial task in computational biology. The simplest way to do this comparison is by using distance and similarity measure. Some of the most important measures are described in this thesis, highlighting the advantages and the weaknesses. In this thesis we give the general idea of a new similarity measure between two phylogenetic trees that share the same set of taxa. It is based on the research of the maximum common substructures in two phylogenetic trees by using, for each taxa, the suffix function on the list of its ancestors. A first implementation of the similarity measure and a general discussion on the results will be given.