ATOL: Assembling a taxonomically balanced genome-scale reconstruction of the evolutionary history of the Enterobacteriaceae

本项目的目的是确定肠杆菌之间的进化关系。 肠杆菌是一个多样化的细菌家族，其占据各种各样的环境，包括植物和动物宿主，并且许多与生物医学或农业相关。该家族成员的基因组序列丰富，但几乎仅限于与人类疾病相关的少数物种。该项目将对另外100个以前被忽视的物种的基因组进行测序，并利用这些数据重建该群体的进化史。细菌和其他一些生物群体的进化分析由于它们在物种之间交换遗传物质的能力而变得复杂，这导致推断基因组不同区域之间的相互冲突的关系。为了解决这个问题，一个由生物学家、统计学家和计算机科学家组成的多学科团队将开发新的分析方法。这些新方法将允许解析肠细菌基因组几乎所有区域之间的关系，并为研究不同群体的其他研究人员提供工具。此外，教育模块的开发将允许将这项工作纳入威斯康星州大学及其他大学的本科生和研究生的培训。将建立一个公共数据库，以鼓励任何感兴趣的方面使用这些基因组序列。

The goal of this project is to determine the evolutionary relationships among the Enterobacteria. Enterobacteria are a diverse family of bacteria that occupy a wide variety of environments including both plant and animal hosts, and many are biomedically or agriculturally relevant. Genome sequences of members of this family are abundant, but are almost exclusively limited to a small number of species associated with human diseases. This project will sequence the genomes of 100 additional previously neglected species, and use these data to reconstruct the phylogeny of the group.Evolutionary analysis of bacteria and some other groups of organisms is complicated by their ability to exchange genetic material between species, which causes inference of conflicting relationships between different regions of the genomes. To tackle this problem, a multidisciplinary team of biologists, statisticians and computer scientists will develop new methods of analysis. These new approaches will allow resolution of the relationships between nearly all regions of enterobacterial genomes, and provide tools for other researchers studying different groups. In addition, development of educational modules will allow incorporation of this work into the training of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, and beyond. A public database will be created to encourage use of these genome sequences by any interested party.