Basis Of Ncbi Taxonomy Tree

Question

[Monzoor]

What is the basis of the relationship among various taxa given in NCBI taxonomy tree. Is the tree based only on 16 gene relationships?.

Answer 1

[Casey Bergman]

The NCBI Taxonomy tree is not based only on 16S RNA trees, but instead is a curated resource that incorporates "phylogenetic and taxonomic knowledge from a variety of sources, including the published literature, web-based databases, and the advice of sequence submitters and outside taxonomy experts." The external taxonomic resources used by NCBI's taxonomy group are listed here and the internal/external experts who have contributed to the tree are listed here.