Dongwook Kim

@dongwookkim.bsky.social

Developing fast and easy methods for #phylogenetics and #bioinformatics | PhD in Bioinformatics | Postdoc @ Comparative Genomics Lab, UNIL/SIB🇨🇭| Formerly @ Steinegger Lab, SNU🇰🇷 | he/him

Can ever-increasing sequence databases improve phylogenetic reconstruction of a gene family? Our new preprint introduces AmpliPhy, a pipeline that automates homolog enrichment to improve gene tree inference, built on a robust phylogenomic benchmark scheme. 🧵1/n 📃 doi.org/10.64898/2026.01.26.701724

AmpliPhy improves gene trees by adding homologs without affecting alignments

In phylogenomics, gene tree reconstruction depends on multiple sequence alignment (MSA) and tree inference, and ongoing work continues to improve inference quality. Denser taxon sampling has been associated with improved gene tree inference, suggesting that adding homologs could be a practical route to higher accuracy as sequence databases continue to expand. However, adding sequences can influence multiple steps of typical inference pipelines, and little is known on its specific effect on the multiple sequence alignment, tree reconstruction, and rooting steps. We performed a large-scale empirical benchmark to quantify how homolog enrichment affects alignment and phylogenetic inference. Using an enrichment-impoverishment design and a measure of tree accuracy based on taxonomic congruence, we found that enrichment consistently improves tree inference quality, while effects on alignment quality are marginal. We show that this improvement is associated with accurate root placement on enriched trees when sensitive homolog search is accompanied. Notably, much of the benefit can be retained with relatively compact alignments produced by sequence addition. Building on these observations, we provide a tool, AmpliPhy, which efficiently improves phylogenetic reconstruction of protein families through homolog enrichment. The AmpliPhy open-source pipeline software is available at https://github.com/DessimozLab/ampliphy. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest. Swiss National Science Foundation, https://ror.org/00yjd3n13, 216623, 10005715

doi.org

New paper from the lab from Sriram Garg in my group. We introduce a general substitution matrix for structural phylogenetics. I think this is a big deal, so read on below if you think deep history is important. academic.oup.com/mbe/advance-...

A general substitution matrix for structural phylogenetics.

Abstract. Sequence-based maximum likelihood (ML) phylogenetics is a widely used method for inferring evolutionary relationships, which has illuminated the

academic.oup.com