The rate of genome sequencing and availability has rapidly increased. It is anticipated that conventional de novo phylogenetic inference may no longer be efficient for such an increasing number of sequences. By integrating parsimony analysis with pre-computed ancestral sequences, we developed TIPars, which allows rapid and memory-efficient insertion of sequences into a reference phylogeny at high accuracy. This enables real-time monitoring of pathogen transmission during a pandemic using large-scale global phylogenetic analysis such as those demonstrated in COVID-19 pandemic. Ye et al 2024

Image Credit: Ningqi Zhao (jeaning7@d24h.hk), Yongtao Ye (yytao@connect.hku.hk), Marcus H. Shum (hohin2@d24h.hk) and Tommy Tsan-Yuk Lam (ttylam@hku.hk) should be credited with the creation of the image.