Molecular biology and evolutionOct 18, 2013

MEGA6: Software for Analyzing Molecular Evolution and Genetics

Circadian Biology Weekly Brief ↗PubMed ↗DOI ↗

Updated Mar 30, 2026

Abstract

Version 6.0 of the Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis (MEGA) software includes new features for inferring timetrees and improved data handling.

MEGA 6.0 introduces the RelTime method for estimating divergence times across all branching points in a phylogenetic tree.
A new Timetree Wizard offers a user-friendly graphical interface for specifying phylogenetic and calibration constraints.
Enhanced algorithms in this version assist in searching for optimal trees based on evolutionary criteria.
Memory management improvements allow MEGA to handle data sets that are twice the size of previous versions.
Both graphical and command-line interfaces of MEGA6 are available for free download.

Simplified

We announce the release of an advanced version of the Molecular Evolutionary Genetics Analysis (MEGA) software, which currently contains facilities for building sequence alignments, inferring phylogenetic histories, and conducting molecular evolutionary analysis. In version 6.0, MEGA now enables the inference of timetrees, as it implements the RelTime method for estimating divergence times for all branching points in a phylogeny. A new Timetree Wizard in MEGA6 facilitates this timetree inference by providing a graphical user interface (GUI) to specify the phylogeny and calibration constraints step-by-step. This version also contains enhanced algorithms to search for the optimal trees under evolutionary criteria and implements a more advanced memory management that can double the size of sequence data sets to which MEGA can be applied. Both GUI and command-line versions of MEGA6 can be downloaded from www.megasoftware.net free of charge.

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MEGA6: Software for Analyzing Molecular Evolution and Genetics

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