Assessing sequence heterogeneity in Chlorellaceae DNA barcode markers for phylogenetic inference

Phylogenetic inference is an important approach that allows the recovery of the evolutionary history and the origin of the Chlorellaceae species. Despite the species’ potential for biofuel feedstock production, their high phenotypic plasticity and similar morphological structures among the species have muddled the taxonomy and identification of the Chlorellaceae species. This study aimed to decipher Chlorellaceae DNA barcode marker heterogeneity by examining the sequence divergence and genomic properties of 18S rRNA, ITS (ITS1-5.8S rRNA-ITS2-28S rRNA), and rbcL from 655 orthologous sequences of 64 species across 31 genera in the Chlorellaceae family. The study assessed the distinct evolutionary properties of the DNA markers that may have caused the discordance between individual trees in the phylogenetic inference using the Robinson-Foulds distance and the Shimodaira-Hasegawa test. Our findings suggest that using the supermatrix approach improves the congruency between trees by reducing stochastic error and increasing the confidence of the inferred Chlorellaceae phylogenetic tree. This study also found that the phylogenies inferred through the supermatrix approach might not always be well supported by all markers. The study highlights that assessing sequence heterogeneity prior to the phylogenetic inference could allow the approach to accommodate sequence evolutionary properties and support species identification from the most congruent phylogeny, which can better represent the evolution of Chlorellaceae species. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s43141-023-00550-5.