## EMBOSS: PHYLIP

# Original PHYLIP protdist documentation.

This is the original PHYLIP documentation and includes information on the old menu driven program which is now replaced with the EMBOSS acd file.

                                                                       version 3.5c

         PROTDIST -- Program to compute distance matrix from protein sequences

    (c) Copyright 1993 by Joseph Felsenstein.  Permission is granted to  copy  this
    document  provided that no fee is charged for it and that this copyright notice
    is not removed.

         This program uses protein sequences to compute a  distance  matrix,  under
    three  different  models of amino acid replacement.  The distance for each pair
    of species estimates the total branch length between the two species,  and  can
    be  used in the distance matrix programs FITCH, KITSCH or NEIGHBOR.  This is an
    alternative to use of  the  sequence  data  itself  in  the  parsimony  program
    PROTPARS.

         The  program  reads  in  protein  sequences  and  writes  an  output  file
    containing  the  distance  matrix.  The three models of amino acid substitution
    are one which is based on the PAM matrixes of  Margaret  Dayhoff,  one  due  to
    Kimura  (1983)  which  approximates  it based simply on the fraction of similar
    amino acids, and one based on a model in which the amino acids are  divided  up
    into  groups,  with change occurring based on the genetic code but with greater
    difficulty of changing  between  groups.   The  program  correctly  takes  into
    account a variety of sequence ambiguities.

         The three methods are:

    (1) The Dayhoff PAM matrix.  This uses Dayhoff's PAM 001  matrix  from  Dayhoff
    (1979),  page 348.  The PAM model is an empirical one that scales probabilities
    of change from one amino acid to another  in  terms  of  a  unit  which  is  an
    expected  1%  change  between  two amino acid sequences.  The PAM 001 matrix is
    used to make a transition probability matrix which  allows  prediction  of  the
    probability of changing from any one amino acid to any other, and also predicts
    equilibrium  amino  acid  composition.   The   program   assumes   that   these
    probabilities  are correct and bases its computations of distance on them.  The
    distance that is computed is scaled in units  of  expected  fraction  of  amino
    acids changed.

    (2)  Kimura's  distance.   This  is  a  rough-and-ready  distance  formula  for
    approximating  PAM distance by simply measuring the fraction of amino acids, p,
    that differs between two sequences and computing the distance as (Kimura, 1983)

                                    2
      D   =   - log  ( 1 - p - 0.2 p  ).
                   e

    This is very quick to do but has some obvious limitations.  It  does  not  take
    into  account  which  amino acids differ or to what amino acids they change, so
    some information is lost.  The units of the distance measure  are  fraction  of
    amino  acids  differing,  as  also  in  the  case  of the PAM distance.  If the
    fraction of amino acids differing gets larger than 0.8541 the distance  becomes
    infinite.

    (3) The Categories  distance.   This  is  my  own  concoction.   I  imagined  a
    nucleotide  sequence changing according to Kimura's 2-parameter model, with the
    exception that some changes of amino acids are less likely  than  others.   The
    amino acids are grouped into a series of categories.  Any base change that does
    not change which category the amino acid is in is allowed, but if an amino acid
    changes  category  this  is  allowed  only a certain fraction of the time.  The
    fraction is called the "ease" and there is a parameter for  it,  which  is  1.0
    when  all  changes are allowed and near 0.0 when changes between categories are
    nearly impossible.

    In this option I have allowed the user to  select  the  Transition/Transversion
    ratio, which of several genetic codes to use, and which categorization of amino
    acids to use.  There are three of them, a somewhat random sample:

       (a) The George-Hunt-Barker (1988) classification of amino acids,

       (b) A classification provided by my colleague Ben Hall when I asked him  for
       one,

       (c) One I found in an old "baby biochemistry" book (Conn and Stumpf,  1963),
       which  contains  most  of the biochemistry I was ever taught, and all that I
       ever learned.
    Interestingly enough, all of them are consisten with the same, linear, ordering
    of  amino  acids,  which  they divide up in different ways.  For the Categories
    model I have set as default  the  George/Hunt/Barker  classification  with  the
    "ease"  parameter  set to 0.457 which is approximately the value implied by the
    empirical rates in the Dayhoff PAM matrix.

         The method uses, as I have noted, Kimura's (1980) 2-parameter model of DNA
    change.   The  Kimura  "2-parameter"  model  allows  for  a  difference between
    transition and transversion rates.  Its transition  probability  matrix  for  a
    short interval of time is:

                  To:     A        G        C        T
                       ---------------------------------
                   A  | 1-a-2b     a         b       b
           From:   G  |   a      1-a-2b      b       b
                   C  |   b        b       1-a-2b    a
                   T  |   b        b         a     1-a-2b

    where a is u dt, the product of the rate of transitions per unit time and dt is
    the length dt of the time interval, and b is v dt, the product of half the rate
    of transversions (i.e., the rate of a specific transversion) and the length  dt
    of the time interval.

         Each distance that is calculated is an estimate, from that particular pair
    of  species,  of  the  divergence  time  between those two species.  The Kimura
    distance is straightforward to compute.  The other two are considerably slower,
    and  they  look  at  all  positions,  and  find  that  distance which makes the
    likelihood highest.  This likelihood is in effect the length  of  the  internal
    branch  in  a two-species tree that connects these two species.  Its likelihood
    is just the product, under the model, of the  probabilities  of  each  position
    having  the  (one  or) two amino acids that are actually found.  This is fairly
    slow to compute.

         The computation proceeds from an eigenanalysis (spectral decomposition) of
    the  transition  probability  matrix.   In  the  case of the PAM 001 matrix the
    eigenvalues and eigenvectors  are  precomputed  and  are  hard-coded  into  the
    program  in  over  400  statements.   In  the  case of the Categories model the
    program computes the eigenvalues and eigenvectors  itself,  which  will  add  a
    delay.   But  the  delay  is  independent  of  the  number  of  species  as the
    calculation is done only once, at the outset.

         The actual algorithm for estimating  the  distance  is  in  both  cases  a
    bisection  algorithm  which  tries to find the point at which the derivative os
    the likelihood is zero.  Some of the kinds of ambiguous amino acids like  "glx"
    are  correctly  taken  into  account.  However, gaps are treated as if they are
    unkown  nucleotides,  which  means  those  positions  get  dropped  from   that
    particular  comparison.  However, they are not dropped from the whole analysis.
    You need not eliminate regions containing gaps, as long as you  are  reasonably
    sure of the alignment there.

         Note that there is an assumption that we are  looking  at  all  positions,
    including  those that have not changed at all.  It is important not to restrict
    attention to some positions based on whether or not they  have  changed;  doing
    that  would bias the distances by making them too large, and that in turn would
    cause the distances to misinterpret the meaning of  those  positions  that  had
    changed.

                               INPUT FORMAT AND OPTIONS

         Input is fairly standard, with one addition.  As usual the first  line  of
    the  file  gives  the number of species and the number of sites.  There follows
    the character W if the Weights option is being used.

         Next come the species data.  Each sequence starts on a  new  line,  has  a
    ten-character  species  name  that  must  be blank-filled to be of that length,
    followed immediately by the species data in the one-letter code.  The sequences
    must  either  be  in the "interleaved" or "sequential" formats described in the
    Molecular Sequence Programs document.  The I option selects between them.   The
    sequences  can  have internal blanks in the sequence but there must be no extra
    blanks at the end of the terminated line.  Note that a blank  is  not  a  valid
    symbol for a deletion.

         After that are the lines (if any) containing the  information  for  the  W
    option, as described below.

         The options are selected using an interactive menu.  The menu  looks  like
    this:

    Protein distance algorithm, version 3.5c

    Settings for this run:
      P  Use PAM, Kimura or categories model?  Dayhoff PAM matrix
      M           Analyze multiple data sets?  No
      I          Input sequences interleaved?  Yes
      0   Terminal type (IBM PC, VT52, ANSI)?  ANSI
      1    Print out the data at start of run  No
      2  Print indications of progress of run  Yes

    Are these settings correct? (type Y or the letter for one to change)

    The user either types "Y" (followed, of course, by a  carriage-return)  if  the
    settings  shown  are to be accepted, or the letter or digit corresponding to an
    option that is to be changed.

         The options M and 0 are the usual ones.  They are described  in  the  main
    documentation file of this package.  Option I is the same as in other molecular
    sequence programs and is described in the documentation file for  the  sequence
    programs.

         The P option selects one of the three distance methods.  It toggles  among
    the three methods. The default method, if none is specified, is the Dayhoff PAM
    matrix model.  If the Categories distance is selected another menu  option,  T,
    will  appear allowing the user to supply the Transition/Transversion ratio that
    should be assumed at the underlying DNA level, and another one, C, which allows
    the  user to select among various nuclear and mitochondrial genetic codes.i The
    transition/transversion ratio can be any number from 0.5 upwards.

         The W (Weights) option is invoked in the usual way, with  only  weights  0
    and  1 allowed.  It selects a set of sites to be analyzed, ignoring the others.
    The sites selected are those with weight 1.  If the W option  is  not  invoked,
    all sites are analyzed.

                                     OUTPUT FORMAT

         As the distances are computed,  the  program  prints  on  your  screen  or
    terminal  the  names of the species in turn, followed by one dot (".") for each
    other species for which the distance to that species has been  computed.   Thus
    if  there  are  ten species, the first species name is printed out, followed by
    one dot, then on the next line the next species name is printed out followed by
    two dots, then the next followed by three dots, and so on.  The pattern of dots
    should form a triangle.  When the distance matrix has been written out  to  the
    output file, the user is notified of that.

         The output file contains on its first line  the  number  of  species.  The
    distance matrix is then printed in standard form, with each species starting on
    a new line with the species name, followed by the distances to the  species  in
    order.   These  continue  onto  a  new  line  after  every nine distances.  The
    distance matrix is square with zero distances on the diagonal.  In general  the
    format  of the distance matrix is such that it can serve as input to any of the
    distance matrix programs.

         If the option to print out the data is  selected,  the  output  file  will
    precede  the  data  by  more  complete  information  on  the input and the menu
    selections.  The output file begins by giving the number  of  species  and  the
    number  of  characters,  and the identity of the distance measure that is being
    used.

         In the Categories model of substitution, the  distances  printed  out  are
    scaled in terms of expected numbers of substitutions, counting both transitions
    and transversions but not replacements of a base by itself, and scaled so  that
    the  average  rate  of  change  is  set to 1.0.  For the Dayhoff PAM and Kimura
    models the distance are scaled in terms of the expected numbers of  amino  acid
    substitutions  per  site.   Of course, when a branch is twice as long this does
    not mean that there will be twice as much net change expected along  it,  since
    some of the changes may occur in the same site and overlie or even reverse each
    other.  The branch  lengths  estimates  here  are  in  terms  of  the  expected
    underlying  numbers  of changes.  That means that a branch of length 0.26 is 26
    times as long as one which would show a 1% difference between the  protein  (or
    nucleotide) sequences at the beginning and end of the branch.  But we would not
    expect the sequences at  the  beginning  and  end  of  the  branch  to  be  26%
    different, as there would be some overlaying of changes.

         One problem that can arise is that two or more of the species  can  be  so
    dissimilar  that  the  distance  between them would have to be infinite, as the
    likelihood rises indefinitely as the estimated divergence time increases.   For
    example,  with  the Kimura model, if the two sequences differ in 85.41% or more
    of their positions then the estimate of  divergence  time  would  be  infinite.
    Since there is no way to represent an infinite distance in the output file, the
    program regards this as an error, issues a  warning  message  indicating  which
    pair of species are causing the problem, and computes a distance of -1.0.

                                   PROGRAM CONSTANTS

         The constants that are  available  to  be  changed  by  the  user  at  the
    beginning  of the program include The other constants include "namelength", the
    length of species  names  in  characters,  and  "epsilon",  a  parameter  which
    controls  the  accuracy  of  the  results  of the iterations which estimate the
    distances.  Making "epsilon" smaller will increase run times but result in more
    decimal places of accuracy.  This should not be necessary.

         The program spends most of its time doing real arithmetic.   Any  software
    or  hardware changes that speed up that arithmetic will speed it up by a nearly
    proportional amount.  For example,  microcomputers  that  have  a  numeric  co-
    processor  (such  as  an 8087, 80287, or 80387 chip) will run this program much
    faster than ones that do not, if the software calls it.

    --------------------------------TEST DATA SET--------------------------

       5   13
    Alpha     AACGTGGCCACAT
    Beta      AAGGTCGCCACAC
    Gamma     CAGTTCGCCACAA
    Delta     GAGATTTCCGCCT
    Epsilon   GAGATCTCCGCCC

    ------ CONTENTS OF OUTPUT FILE (with all numerical options on ) -----------
    Name            Sequences
    ----            ---------

    Alpha        AACGTGGCCA CAT
    Beta         ..G..C.... ..C
    Gamma        C.GT.C.... ..A
    Delta        G.GA.TT..G .C.
    Epsilon      G.GA.CT..G .CC

        5
    Alpha          0.00000  0.47285  0.88304  1.29841  2.12269
    Beta           0.47285  0.00000  0.45192  1.34185  0.84009
    Gamma          0.88304  0.45192  0.00000  1.30693  1.21582
    Delta          1.29841  1.34185  1.30693  0.00000  0.27536
    Epsilon        2.12269  0.84009  1.21582  0.27536  0.00000