IQ-TREE

IQ-TREE is a bioinformatics software tool used to reconstruct phylogenetic trees from molecular sequence data such as DNA, RNA, or proteins.

Phylogenetic trees are diagrams used to represent the evolutionary relationships among different organisms or genes, showing how they evolved from common ancestors over time. To build these trees, scientists align DNA, RNA, or protein sequences from the species of interest. This alignment allows researchers to identify patterns of similarity and difference that reflect evolutionary changes.

Given an alignment file, IQ-TREE searches for the tree topology that most likely explains the observed sequence alignment under a given evolutionary model. The software supports a wide range of complex evolutionary models, including partitioned datasets and mixture models, making it suitable for both small and large-scale phylogenomic analyses. Because of its speed, scalability, and built-in statistical tools, IQ-TREE has become a popular choice for researchers studying evolutionary relationships across diverse biological datasets.

Source code: https://github.com/iqtree/iqtree2

Guidelines

Teams will be provided with a set of datasets and tasks at the beginning of the application period. Please refer to the IQ-TREE documentation, including the beginner tutorial and the advanced tutoral for examples of possible tasks. Teams are expected to use IQ-TREE version 2.4.0. Any modifications to the source code must be disclosed to and approved by the committee by April 3rd.

We are also planning an interview component where teams will be able to demonstrate their understanding of the IQ-TREE software. In the week before the competition, the committee will reach out to schedule a short interview that will occur while the teams are completing application tasks.