TreefinderMarch 2011

Designed for experienced users, Treefinder is an advanced software utility desinged to help you create phylogenetic trees from molecular sequences. It contains plenty of analysis modes and other useful tools.

Simple setup and GUI

After a brief setup procedure, you are greeted by a plain and simple window that looks outdated, which integrates a design view for the molecular sequences.You can write text just like in an ordinary word processor or load it from an external file, use a search and replace function, import images, as well as load and run TL scripts. It's possible to zoom in and out of the design or redraw it from scratch.

Analyze data and generate phylogenetic trees

When it comes to analyzing information, you can propose a model and ask Treefinder to check the base composition, reconstruct the phylogeny, perform a bootstrap analysis or parametric bootstrap test, verify topologies and hypotheses, compute SimIC and sitewise rates, build a consensus or distance tree, as well as calibrate the tree.Several utilities are put at your disposal, enabling you to view data partitions, transform sequence data, check the name compatibility, generate start trees, join multiple sequence, sample, report or tree files into a single item, compute sample statistics, ML distances or sitewise likehoods, and simulate sequences. Undoing your actions is possible, so you can fix any mistakes.

Evaluation and conclusion

No error dialogs popped up in our tests, and the software application didn't hang or crash. Its impact on the machine's performance was minimal, thanks to the fact that it needed low CPU and RAM to work properly. On the other hand, Treefinder hasn't been updated for a very long time, and it clearly needs some interface improvements. Nevertheless, it delivers powerful and approachable options for generating phylogenetic trees from molecular sequences.