Development and optimization of novel phylogenomic methods to elucidate diversity and evolution in the tribe Cichorieae (Compositae/sunflower family), providing key contributions to the Compositae family tree of life.

这个项目代表了我们正在进行的关于菊科（或菊科，向日葵科）中菊科部落的系统学研究的一个新颖和创新的部分。它代表了我们对国际合作网络的贡献，致力于提高对复合生命树的理解（见Mandel & al. 2017）。我们计划进一步开发下一代测序（NGS）方法，称为靶标富集和杂交捕获，针对核基因组的保守位点进行系统基因组分析。该方法已在分子实验室中成功地由拟议项目的PI测试，拟议项目被设计为一个试点研究，将使我们能够开发和提高实验室步骤和数据分析的效率。拟议的试点项目将集中于对迄今为止仍知之甚少的大亚部落Scorzonerinae （black salsify, cicchory; tribe Cichorieae）进行最深的分类采样。该项目的一个主要特点是与一名来自伊朗的学生合作，他的博士研究方向是Scorzonera的系统学。这位博士生已经获得了伊朗的经济支持，前往柏林学习并将目标富集和混合捕获方法应用于她对Scorzonera的系统研究。本提案将支持分子实验室工作。此外，该博士生将提供来自伊朗的该属的深度分类样本，伊朗是Scorzonera多样性的热点，拥有许多特有物种。目标富集和混合捕获数据的分析方法正在不断发展；因此，该项目还将提供一个可靠的蝉科数据集，以便对不同类型的生物信息学分析的性能进行深入评估。我们的目标是开发一种更流式的方法来分析这些数据集，以促进我们未来的工作。这也将与菊科研究界和一般的植物系统学家有关，他们正在研究类似的方法和数据集。

The proposed project represents a novel and innovative part of our ongoing research on the systematics of the Cichorieae tribe in the mega-diverse flowering plant family Compositae (or Asteraceae, sunflower family). It represents our contribution to the international collaboration network working towards an improved understand of the Compositae tree of life (see Mandel & al. 2017).We plan to further develop a next generation sequencing (NGS) approach called target enrichment and hybrid capture that targets conserved loci of the nuclear genome for phylogenomic analyses. The method has already successfully been tested by the PI of the proposed project in the molecular lab and the proposed project is designed as a pilot study that will enable us to develop and increase the efficiency of the lab steps and data analyses. The proposed pilot project will focus on and conduct the deepest taxonomic sampling of the large subtribe Scorzonerinae (black salsify, cichory; tribe Cichorieae) to date that remains poorly understood. A major characteristic of the project is the collaboration with a student from Iran whose PhD focusses on the systematics of Scorzonera. The PhD student has already received financial support from Iran to come to Berlin to learn and apply the target enrichment and hybrid capture method to her systematic work on Scorzonera. The present proposal would support the molecular lab work. Moreover, the PhD student will provide deep taxonomic sampling of the genus from Iran that is a hotspot for Scorzonera diversity hosting many endemic species.The methods for analyses of target enrichment and hybrid capture data is continuously being developed; therefore, this project will also provide a robust dataset of Cichorieae to allow indepth assessment of the performance of the different types of bioinformatics analyses. We aim to develop a more stream lined approach for analyses of such datasets to facilitate our future work. This will also be relevant to the Asteraceae research community and plant systematists in general who are working on similar methods and datasets.