Collaborative Research: Assembling the Echinoderm Tree of Life

棘皮动物包括我们熟悉的动物，如海星、海胆，以及一系列可以追溯到大约5亿年前寒武纪的灭绝物种。棘皮动物与脊椎动物有着共同的祖先，因此为理解整个生命之树的很大一部分以及我们物种的历史提供了关键的联系。这个项目，即棘皮动物生命之树项目，将解决棘皮动物在生命之树中的系统发育位置，并利用基因测序和解剖学数据澄清主要棘皮动物谱系之间重要的未解决的关系。棘皮动物令人着迷，它们独特的特征，如可变的韧带和探测光线的新方法，在生物医学工程上有应用。由于对这些海洋动物及其适应性的研究自然对年轻人有吸引力，因此预计将招募优秀的学生，并将科学的重要性传达给广泛的受众。科学出版物、教科书、解剖学和基因组数据以及生命之树和生命百科全书网络项目中的大量页面所体现的长期影响，将为研究人员和教育工作者提供资源。外联活动将包括有关海洋勘探和生物医学科学领域基础生物学研究应用的录像和广播。

Echinoderms include familiar animals such as starfishes, sea urchins, and a wide array of extinct forms stretching back to the Cambrian Period, circa 500 million years ago. Echinoderms share a common ancestor with backboned animals and thus provide a crucial link to understanding a huge portion of the entire tree of life as well as the history of our species. This project, the Echinoderm Tree of Life Project, will resolve the phylogenetic placement of Echinoderms within the tree of life and clarify important unresolved relationships among major echinoderm lineages using data from genetic sequencing and anatomy.Echinoderms are fascinating, and their unique features, such as mutable ligaments and novel means of detecting light, have biomedical engineering applications. Because research on such marine animals and their adaptations is naturally attractive to young people, excellent students are expected to be recruited and the importance of science will be communicated to a broad audience. Long-term impacts, embodied by scientific publications, textbooks, anatomical and genomic data, and extensive pages in the Tree of Life and Encyclopedia of Life web projects, will provide resources to researchers and educators. Outreach will include videos and broadcasts about marine exploration and applications of fundamental biological research across the biomedical sciences.