Molecular phylogenetics: state-of-the-art methods for looking into the past

As the amount of molecular sequence data in the public domain grows, so doe s the range of biological topics that it influences through evolutionary co nsiderations. In recent years, a number of developments have enabled molecu lar phylogenetic methodology to keep pace. Likelihood-based inferential tec hniques, although controversial in the past, lie at the heart of these new methods and are producing the promised advances in the understanding of seq uence evolution, They allow both a wide variety of phylogenetic inferences from sequence data and robust statistical assessment of all results. It can not remain acceptable to use outdated data analysis techniques when superio r alternatives exist. Here, we discuss the most important and exciting meth ods currently available to the molecular phylogeneticist.