Presentation slides from Evolution 2013 available
Open Tree of Life at meetings
The Open Tree of Life project is one of the many phylogeny projects that are featured during the Evolution 2013 meeting that currently takes place in Snowbird (UT). The presentation slides from Karen Cranston, the principal investigator of Open Tree of Life, are available online (LINK). Presentation slides from other investigators are added here in the upcoming days.
Evolution 2013 is the joint annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE), the Society of Systematic Biologists (SSB), and the American Society of Naturalists (ASN). The conference meets jointly with the iEvoBio conference. Open Tree of Life is represented at both events. About 1400 participants are expected to share their research in evolution, systematics, biodiversity, software, and mathematics.
Tree of Life: Are big changes looming on the horizon?
All species like some gadgets
While movie hero James Bond gets his spy gadgets from his loyal developer Q, almost every other species on Earth has to put a little more effort in armoring themselves. But that does not mean they cannot rely on some good ol’ friends to do so. In fact, the acquisition of genes from two or more species through lateral gene transfer can lead to innovations that at times can be painful—sometimes even deadly—to others.
One of those evolutionary novelties is noticeable for certain types of jellyfish that developed the ability to sting after their ancestors acquired a gene from a bacterium and incorporated that material in their own DNA. This gene transmission helped jellyfish to create an innovative defense tool to fend off other species that could endanger them. The result is quite frightening: more humans get killed by jellyfish than sharks. (more…)
Quiz time!
Put on your quiz hats! We need some good questions!
SUBMIT YOUR QUESTIONS HERE
• Sponges fall within which major group on the tree of life? (animal, plant, bacteria)
• Which are mushrooms more closely related to: (animals, red algae or plants?)
• How many origins of life were there on Earth? (1, 2, 3)
• Which organisms represent the greatest biomass on Earth?
(bacteria and archaea, mammals, fish)
• How many major groups of organisms are represented in a ham sandwich? (1, 2, 3)
• Genes (i.e. portions of genomes) yield the same estimate for the ToL? (Yes, No, Sometimes)
• The top 10 infectious agents on earth appear where on the tree? (bacteria only, in both bacteria and eukaryotes, in both bacterial and archaea)
• Each gene sequenced and analyzed yields the very same answer for the ToL? (Yes, No, Sometimes)You can submit up to three questions with this form, but feel free to submit more by starting a new one!
What data should we collect about the input trees for the tree of life?
The absence of a formal reporting standard for phylogenetic analyses is a major impediment for digital access and reuse of published gene trees and species trees. Efforts are underway to develop a standard for Minimal Information About Phylogenetic Analyses (MIAPA). An important part of this process is community input on metadata – what is important for use and evaluation, and what is reasonable to expect from producers of trees?
Results from this survey will inform two efforts: the collection of digital phylogenetic data for Open Tree of Life and the development of a minimum information standard for reporting phylogenetic analyses (MIAPA, http://www.evoio.org/wiki/MIAPA). If you have any questions, please contact Karen Cranston, National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (karen.cranston@nescent.org).
Please add your opinion here
What are your favorite species?
Dear Colleagues,
We need your help creating a list of exemplar species from across the tree of life for our public tree!
Please click this link to vote for your 5 best exemplars.
NSF’s press release on the Open Tree of Life
Press Release 12-106 (original article)
Assembling, Visualizing and Analyzing a Tree of All Life
National Science Foundation grants will bring together what’s known about how species are related
The “Open Tree of Life” is one of three major new scientific projects funded by the NSF.
June 4, 2012
A new initiative aims to build a comprehensive tree of life that brings together everything scientists know about how all species are related, from the tiniest bacteria to the tallest tree.
Researchers are working to provide the infrastructure and computational tools to enable automatic updating of the tree of life, as well as develop the analytical and visualization tools to study it.
Scientists have been building evolutionary trees for more than 150 years, since Charles Darwin drew the first sketches in his notebook.
Darwin’s theory of evolution explained that millions of species are related and gave biologists and paleontologists the enormous challenge of discovering the branching pattern of the tree of life.
But despite significant progress in fleshing out the major branches of the tree of life, today there is still no central place where researchers can go to visualize and analyze the entire tree.
Now, thanks to grants totaling $13 million from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Assembling, Visualizing, and Analyzing the Tree of Life (AVAToL) program, three teams of scientists plan to make that a reality.
