Building a Specific Amino Acid Substitution Model for Dengue Viruses

摘要

Phylogenetic trees inferred from protein sequences are strongly affected by amino acid substitution models. Although different amino acid substitution models have been proposed, only a few were estimated for specific species such as the FLU model for influenza viruses. Among the most dangerous viruses for human health, dengue is always on top and the cause of dengue fever up to 100 million people per year. In this study, we built a specific amino acid substitution model for dengue protein sequences, called DEN. The dengue protein sequences were obtained from the NCBI dengue database and the model was estimated using the maximum likelihood method. Experiments showed that the new model DEN helped to build better phylogenetic trees than other existing models. We strongly recommend researchers to use the DEN model for analyzing dengue protein data.