Software review

TreeViewJ: An application for viewing and analyzing phylogenetic trees

Matthew W Peterson^{* 1,2} and Marc E Colosimo^{* 1}

¹The MITRE Corporation, 202 Burlington Rd, Bedford, MA, USA

²Department of Biomedical Engineering, Boston University, 44 Cummington St, Boston, MA, USA

author email corresponding author email* Contributed equally

Source Code for Biology and Medicine 2007, 2:7doi:10.1186/1751-0473-2-7

Published:	31 October 2007

Abstract

Background

Phylogenetic trees are widely used to visualize evolutionary relationships between different organisms or samples of the same organism. There exists a variety of both free and commercial tree visualization software available, but limitations in these programs often require researchers to use multiple programs for analysis, annotation, and the production of publication-ready images.

Results

We present TreeViewJ, a Java tool for visualizing, editing and analyzing phylogenetic trees. The software allows researchers to color and change the width of branches that they wish to highlight, and add names to nodes. If collection dates are available for taxa, the software can map them onto a timeline, and sort the tree in ascending or descending date order.

Conclusion

TreeViewJ is a tool for researchers to visualize, edit, "decorate," and produce publication-ready images of phylogenetic trees. It is open-source, and released under an GPL license, and available at http://treeviewj.sourceforge.net webcite.