Collaborative Research: Assembling the Echinoderm Tree of Life

棘皮动物包括熟悉的动物，如海星，海胆，以及广泛的灭绝形式，可追溯到寒武纪时期，大约5亿年前。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至关重要的联系。该项目名为“棘皮动物生命树项目”（Echinoderm Tree of Life Project），将利用基因测序和解剖学数据，解决棘皮动物在生命树中的系统发育位置，并澄清主要棘皮动物谱系之间重要的未解决关系。棘皮动物是迷人的，其独特的特征，如可变韧带和新颖的光探测手段，具有生物医学工程应用。 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，因此希望招募优秀的学生，并向广大受众宣传科学的重要性。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”网络项目中的大量网页所体现的长期影响将为研究人员和教育工作者提供资源。 外联活动将包括关于海洋勘探和生物医学科学基础生物研究应用的视频和广播。

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.