ATOL: Phylum Nematoda: Integrating Multidisciplinary Expertise and Infrastructure for Resolving Relationships in a Major Branch of the Tree of Life

ATOL：线虫门：整合多学科专业知识和基础设施来解决生命树主要分支中的关系

• 批准号: 0228692
• 负责人: William Thomas
• 金额: $ 244万
• 依托单位: University of New Hampshire
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-10-01 至 2009-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0228692&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: ATOL; Phylum; Nematoda; Integrating; Multidisciplinary

A grant has been awarded to Dr. William K Thomas at the University of New Hampshire and his colleagues Dr. James Baldwin and Dr. Paul De Ley (University of California, Riverside), Dr. David Fitch (New York University) and Dr. Steven Nadler (University of California, Davis) to examine the evolutionary history and biodiversity of nematodes. The phylum Nematoda (roundworms) is argued to be one of the most abundant and genetically diverse animal phyla on earth. In addition, they play a key position in animal evolution and understanding of controversial invertebrate evolutionary relationships. Phylogenetic studies of this enormous phylum have been impeded by the difficulty of working with such diverse taxa, most of which are microscopic and known by relatively few experts. Nematode phylogenetics has also been impeded by the fragmentation of taxonomic specialists among different disciplines and by bias toward economically or medically important parasites of plants, vertebrates and invertebrates. Accordingly, understanding their evolutionary history is a critical component in the NSF's Assembling the Tree of Life program. This project will develop a higher-level tree for the nematodes to provide a framework for interpreting their diversity. The work will use both molecular (18S ribosomal genes) and morphological data for over 1000 species. In a parallel effort, they will use the results of this work as a basis for selecting 50 nematode species for construction of cDNA libraries to provide greater insight into genetic diversity in the phylum and to possibly resolve the longstanding questions about of the deepest branches of the nematode tree or even its phylogenetic position in the animal kingdom.

新罕布什尔大学的William K Thomas博士及其同事James Baldwin博士和Paul De Ley博士（加州大学河滨分校）、David Fitch博士（纽约大学）和Steven Nadler博士（加州大学戴维斯分校）获得了一笔资助，用于研究线虫的进化史和生物多样性。线虫门（蛔虫）被认为是地球上最丰富和遗传多样性最大的动物门之一。此外，它们在动物进化和理解有争议的无脊椎动物进化关系方面发挥着关键作用。这一巨大门的系统发育研究一直受到研究如此多样化分类群的困难的阻碍，其中大多数是微观的，只有相对较少的专家知道。线虫的系统发育也受到不同学科的分类学专家的分散和对具有经济或医学意义的植物、脊椎动物和无脊椎动物寄生虫的偏爱的阻碍。因此，了解它们的进化历史是美国国家科学基金会“组装生命之树”项目的关键组成部分。该项目将为线虫开发一个更高层次的树，为解释它们的多样性提供一个框架。这项工作将使用超过1000个物种的分子（18S核糖体基因）和形态数据。与此同时，他们将利用这项工作的结果作为选择50种线虫物种构建cDNA文库的基础，以更深入地了解该门的遗传多样性，并可能解决关于线虫树最深分支的长期问题，甚至是它在动物界的系统发育位置。