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

本项目的目标是确定肠杆菌之间的进化关系。肠道细菌是一个种类繁多的细菌家族，它们占据着包括植物和动物宿主在内的各种环境，其中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，但几乎仅限于少数与人类疾病有关的物种。这个项目将对另外100个以前被忽视的物种的基因组进行排序，并使用这些数据来重建该群体的系统发育。细菌和其他一些有机体群体的进化分析因其在物种之间交换遗传物质的能力而变得复杂，这导致了对基因组不同区域之间相互冲突的关系的推断。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决几乎所有肠杆菌基因组区域之间的关系，并为其他研究不同群体的研究人员提供工具。此外，开发教育模块将允许将这项工作纳入威斯康星大学本科生和研究生的培训以及其他方面。将建立一个公共数据库，以鼓励任何感兴趣的各方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.