Algorithms for computing parsimonious evolutionary scenarios for genome evolution, the last universal common ancestor and dominance of horizontal gene transfer in the evolution of prokaryotes

Boris G Mirkin¹ , Trevor I Fenner¹ , Michael Y Galperin² and Eugene V Koonin²

¹School of Information Systems and Computer Science, Birkbeck College, University of London, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HX, UK

²National Center for Biotechnology Information, National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD 20894, USA