Phylogenetic Relationships within the Dinoflagellates

鞭毛藻是一种常见而重要的单细胞生物。它们都是自由生活的，并与其他多种生物共生。共生形式在其宿主内进化出几种不同的功能关系，这导致了关于它们的进化关系以及它们从其他单细胞真核生物群体起源的不同意见。Drs。Clifford Brunk和David Chapman建议从合适的物种中获取RNA序列数据，为推断进化关系提供一个强大的数据集。将基于新序列数据的进化树与基于生化和形态数据的进化树进行比较。拟议的研究将产生广泛的影响，超出了鞭毛藻专家的社区。这个项目的重点是生命之树上最早的一些分支，其结果将为微生物学家、微生物生态学家和海洋生物学家提供一个研究各种现象的框架。这些结果也将在微生物分子数据的使用方面开辟新天地，并将为共生进化提供新的见解。

Dinoflagellates are a common and important group of single- celled organisms. They are both free-living and symbiotic with a diversity of other organisms. The symbiotic forms have evolved several distinct functional relationships within their hosts, and this has led to differences of opinion concerning their evolutionary relationships, and their origin (or origins) from other single-celled eucaryotic groups. Drs. Clifford Brunk and David Chapman propose to obtain RNA sequence data from the appropriate species, providing a powerful data set from which to infer evolutionary relationships. The evolutionary tree based on the new sequence data will be compared with the trees based on biochemical and morphological data. The proposed research will have wide impact beyond the community of dinoflagellate specialists. This project focuses on some of the earliest branches in the tree of life, and the results will provide microbiologists, microbial ecologists, and marine biologists with a framework for studying diverse phenomena. The results will also break new ground in the use of molecular data from micro-organisms, and will provide new insight into the evolution of symbiosis.