An Xserve computer cluster for phlogenetic and comparative genomic analyses

分子生物学和基因组学正在彻底改变我们对地球生命历史的理解。在我们的有生之年，我们似乎有可能最终实现达尔文的梦想，“..我们将拥有每一个大自然王国的非常真实的家谱。".事实上，生物学中一些最令人兴奋的长期存在的问题与这些“大自然王国”的性质以及它们是如何形成的有关。近年来发展的复杂计算方法使我们能够解开生物体基因组序列中的进化信息。通过这种方式比较基因组，我们已经开始澄清生命之树的大致轮廓。我们还深入了解了从微生物到人类的生物体基因组如何进化的模式和过程。 此应用程序是为了获得一个强大的苹果计算机集群，将由达尔豪西大学的跨学科研究人员的协作团队使用。我们的研究计划旨在确定生命之树的主要群体，并通过开发和应用复杂的基于计算机的统计方法来重建进化历史，阐明过去35亿年来进化的基因，蛋白质和基因组的进化机制。

Molecular biology and genomics are revolutionizing our understanding of the history of Life on Earth. Within our lifetimes, it seems likely that we will finally realize Darwin's dream that "...we shall have very fairly true genealogical trees of each great kingdom of nature...". Indeed, some of the most exciting long-standing problems in biology have concerned the nature of these 'great kingdoms of nature' and how they came to be. The development sophisticated computational methods in recent years has allowed us to unlock the evolutionary information residing in genome sequences of organisms. From comparing genomes this way, we have begun to clarify the broad outlines of the tree of Life. We are also gaining insights into the pattern and process of how the genomes of organisms, from microbes to humans, evolve.  This application is to acquire a powerful Apple computer cluster that will be used by a collaborative team of interdisciplinary researchers at Dalhousie University. Our research program is aimed at determining the major groups of the tree of Life and elucidating the evolutionary mechanisms by genes, proteins and genomes evolved over the last 3.5 billion years by developing and applying complex computer-based statistical methods for reconstructing evolutionary history.