Research from University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) in Influenza A Virus Provides New Insights (Random-effects substitution models for phylogenetics via scalable gradient approximations).

A report from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) discusses research findings on influenza A virus. The research focuses on the characterization of the underlying character substitution process in phylogenetic and evolutionary inference. The study presents random-effects substitution models that capture a wider variety of substitution dynamics and proposes an efficient approach to compute an approximation to the gradient of the data likelihood. The research demonstrates the effectiveness of these models in analyzing SARS-CoV-2 sequences and the phylogeographic spread of influenza A virus. The study concludes that random-effects substitution models can accommodate both negligible and radical departures from the underlying base substitution model. [Extracted from the article]