Phylo2Vec

Phylo2Vec (or phylo2vec) is a high-performance software package for encoding, manipulating, and analysing binary phylogenetic trees. At its core, the package contains representation of binary trees, which defines a bijection from any tree topology with 𝑛 leaves into an integer vector of size 𝑛 − 1. Compared to the traditional Newick format, phylo2vec was designed with fast sampling, fast conversion/compression from Newick-format trees to the Phylo2Vec format, and rapid tree comparison in mind.

This current version features a core implementation in Rust, providing significant performance improvements and memory efficiency while remaining available in Python (superseding the version described in the original paper) and R via dedicated wrappers, making it accessible to a broad audience in the bioinformatics community.

Link to the paper: https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syae030

Installation

Pip

The easiest way to install the standard Python package is using pip:

pip install phylo2vec

Several optimization schemes based on Phylo2Vec are also available, but require extra dependencies. (See this notebook for a demo). To avoid bloating the standard package, these dependencies must be installed separately. To do so, run:

pip install phylo2vec[opt]

Manual installation

• We recommend setting up pixi package management tool.
• Clone the repository and install using pixi:

git clone https://github.com/sbhattlab/phylo2vec.git
cd phylo2vec
pixi run -e py-phylo2vec install-python

This will compile and install the package as the core functionality is written in Rust.

Installing R package

Option 1: from a release (Windows, Mac, Ubuntu >= 22.04)

Retrieve one of the compiled binaries from the releases that fits your OS. Once the file is downloaded, simply run install.packages in your R command line.

install.packages("/path/to/package_file", repos = NULL, type = 'source')

Option 2: using devtools

⚠️ This requires installing Rust to build the core package.

devtools::install_github("sbhattlab/phylo2vec", subdir="./r-phylo2vec", build = FALSE)

Note: to download a specific version, use:

devtools::install_github("sbhattlab/phylo2vec@vX.Y.Z", subdir="./r-phylo2vec", build = FALSE)

Option 3: manual installation

⚠️ This requires installing Rust to build the core package.

Clone the repository and run the following install.packages in your R command line.

Note: to download a specific version, you can use git checkout to a desired tag.

git clone https://github.com/sbhattlab/phylo2vec
cd phylo2vec

install.packages("./r-phylo2vec", repos = NULL, type = 'source')

Basic Usage

Python

Conversion between Newick and vector representations

import numpy as np
from phylo2vec import from_newick, to_newick

# Convert a vector to Newick string
v = np.array([0, 1, 2, 3, 4])
newick = to_newick(v)  # '(0,(1,(2,(3,(4,5)6)7)8)9)10;'

# Convert Newick string back to vector
v_converted = from_newick(newick)  # array([0, 1, 2, 3, 4], dtype=int16)

Tree Manipulation

from phylo2vec.utils.vector import add_leaf, remove_leaf, reroot_at_random

# Add a leaf to an existing tree
v_new = add_leaf(v, 2)  # Add a leaf to the third position

# Remove a leaf
v_reduced = remove_leaf(v, 1)  # Remove the second leaf

# Random rerooting
v_rerooted = reroot_at_random(v)

Optimization

To run the hill climbing-based optimisation scheme presented in the original Phylo2Vec paper, run:

# A hill-climbing scheme to optimize Phylo2Vec vectors
from phylo2vec.opt import HillClimbing

hc = HillClimbing(verbose=True)
hc_result = hc.fit("/path/to/your_fasta_file.fa")

Documentation

For comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and API reference, visit: https://phylo2vec.readthedocs.io

How to Contribute

We welcome contributions to Phylo2Vec! Here's how you can help:

1. Fork the repository and create your branch from main
2. Make your changes and add tests if applicable
3. Run the tests to ensure they pass
4. Submit a pull request with a detailed description of your changes

Please make sure to follow our coding standards and write appropriate tests for new features.

Thanks to our contributors so far!

License

This project is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0 (LGPL).

Citation

If you use Phylo2Vec in your research, please cite:

@article{10.1093/sysbio/syae030,
    author = {Penn, Matthew J and Scheidwasser, Neil and Khurana, Mark P and Duchêne, David A and Donnelly, Christl A and Bhatt, Samir},
    title = {Phylo2Vec: a vector representation for binary trees},
    journal = {Systematic Biology},
    year = {2024},
    month = {03},
    doi = {10.1093/sysbio/syae030},
    url = {https://doi.org/10.1093/sysbio/syae030},
}

Related Work

• Preprint repository (core functions are deprecated): https://github.com/Neclow/phylo2vec_preprint
• C++ version (deprecated): https://github.com/Neclow/phylo2vec_cpp
• GradME: https://github.com/Neclow/GradME = phylo2vec + minimum evolution + gradient descent