Phylogenetic Analysis by Maximum Likelihood

PAML (for Phylogenetic Analysis by Maximum Likelihood) is a package of programs for phylogenetic analyses of DNA or protein sequences using maximum likelihood. It is maintained by Ziheng Yang and distributed under the GNU GPL v3.

Before running any of the programs included in the PAML software, please go through the different sections of this Wiki, where a detailed explanation of how to install and run the programs is given. One of the main problems users face is related to data formatting. In that way, please make sure that you go through the section Data formatting in the PAML Wiki before running any PAML program and format your input data files and control files accordingly.

[!IMPORTANT]

• Problems with input data, control files, error/warning messages output by the PAML programs (which inform users about formatting issues in their input files or wrong settings in their control files), and general questions should be posted in the PAML discussion group. Before posting a message, please use the search tool in the PAML discussion group to check whether your question/s have already been asked by other PAML users. You should also refer to the FAQs document. If you still cannot find an answer to your question/s, please post them in the PAML discussion group.
• Please, do not paste the screen output and the error/warning that you get without any reference when you are requesting help. Instead, make sure that you attach the input data and the control files you are using, explain how you ran PAML, which PAML version you are using, etc. In that way, your issue will be much easier and faster to troubleshoot. You can find more information about how to report your warning/error message on this website.
• Please, only raise an issue on this GitHub repository when you experience technical problems such as compiling issues, programs aborting or not running at all, etc.

Installation

ANSI C source codes and executable files are distributed for UNIX, Linux, and Mac OS X (see the latest stable release available on this GitHub repository). PAML is not good for tree making, although it may be used to estimate parameters and test hypotheses to study the evolutionary process once you have reconstructed trees using other programs such as RAxML-NG, IQ-TREE, PAUP*, PHYLIP, PhyML, etc.

To download and install PAML software, please follow the next links in the wiki:

• Downloading and installing PAML
  • PAML for Linux
    • How to export paths in Linux
  • PAML for Mac OS X
    • How to export paths in Mac OS X
  • PAML for Windows 10 or later
    • How to export paths using the Windows Subsystem for Linux
  • Old compiled versions of PAML
    • PAML for Mac OS X
    • PAML for Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP/Vista 7
  • Graphical user interface: PAML-X

Documentation

The PAML Wiki is still under construction :wrench: -- we are slowly migrating the PAML documentation in PDF format to a more interactive and engaging tutorial!

In the meantime, you can access the following sections, which are also detailed in the PAML Wiki home section:

• Overview
  • PAML documentation
  • What PAML programs can do
  • What PAML programs cannot do
• Data formatting
  • Sequence data file format
    • Sequential and interleaved formats
      • Species/sequence names
      • Option G
      • Option G for codon sequences (codeml with seqtype = 1)
    • Site pattern counts
  • Tree file format and representations of tree topology
    • Parenthesis notation
    • Tree files produced by PAUP and MacClade
    • Branch or node labels
    • Divergence date symbol @
    • Branch representation of tree topology
• Substitution models
  • Nucleotide substitution models
  • Codon substitution models
    • Branch models
    • Site models
      • Suzuki and Gojobori’s (1999) method for detecting sites under positive selection
    • Branch-site models
    • Clade models
    • Mutation-selection models
  • Amino acid substitution models
• PAML programs
  • BASEML
  • BASEMLG
  • CODEML
  • Evolver
  • Infinitesites
  • MCMCtree
  • yn00

Citing PAML

If you use PAML, please cite the following:

• Yang, Z (1997). PAML: a program package for phylogenetic analysis by maximum likelihood. Comput. Appl. Biosci. 13, 555-556.
• Yang, Z (2007). PAML 4: Phylogenetic Analysis by Maximum Likelihood. Mol. Biol. Evol. 24, 1586-1591.

In addition...

If you use the PAML program MCMCtree, please cite the following papers if you have used/run...

• ... the approximate likelihood calculation to speed up analyses with phylogenomic datasets (calculating branch lengths, Hessian, and gradient):
  • dos Reis M and Yang Z (2011). Approximate likelihood calculation for Bayesian estimation of divergence times. Mol. Biol. Evol. 28, 2161-2172.
• ... Bayesian model selection analyses:
  • dos Reis M, et al. (2018). Using phylogenomic data to explore the effects of relaxed clocks and calibration strategies on divergence time estimation: Primates as a test case. Syst. Biol. 67, 594–615. Also, please cite the mcmc3r R package if you use it (see tutorial via this link).