Genomic and phylogenetic approaches for investigating plant biodiversity and evolution

我的研究计划的一个主要重点是重建陆地植物的深层和最新的系统发生(系谱)关系，陆地植物是支撑陆地生态的有机体。我们的系统发育分析和比较基因组方法将提供一个多学科框架，以促进我们对植物主要进化转变的理解，使我们能够在分子水平上描述物种边界，并允许我们将基因组数据与生物生物学联系起来。我们将使用跨分类单元转录组比较作为一种创新的方法来研究植物进化中的主要转变。我们还将挖掘转录组数据集，以开发和应用核基因标记，以详细研究早期模式植物Trithuria(Hydatellaceae)中的局部系统发育关系和物种边界。这些水生植物的关键进化位置靠近开花植物的起源，这将有助于预测整个开花植物的基因功能和进化。最后，我们将解决我们在理解单子叶藻目泽泻目系统发育方面的薄弱环节，泽泻目是一个主要的陆地植物群，主要生活在水生栖息地，包括我们的沿海环境。我们将使用大规模的对整个叶绿体基因组的调查，为这一重要的植物群体得出健壮的、密集抽样的系统发育框架。拟议的工作包括为学生提供大量新的培训机会，包括为本科生研究人员提供生物信息学/系统基因组学项目。

A major focus of my research program is to reconstruct deep and recent phylogenetic (genealogical) relationships of the land plants, the organisms that underpin terrestrial ecology. Our phylogenetic analysis and comparative genomic approaches will provide a multidisciplinary framework to facilitate our understanding of major evolutionary transitions in plants, allow us to characterize species boundaries at a molecular level, and permit us to connect genomic data back to organismal biology. We will use cross-taxon transcriptome comparisons as an innovative approach to study major transitions in plant evolution. We will also mine transcriptome data sets to develop and apply nuclear-gene markers for detailed studies of local phylogenetic relationships and species boundaries in a novel early 'model plant' system, Trithuria (Hydatellaceae). The key evolutionary position of these aquatic plants, which branched close to the origin of the flowering plants, will facilitate predictions of gene function and evolution across the flowering plants as a whole. Finally, we will resolve resolving weaknesses in our understanding of the phylogeny of the monocot order Alismatales, a major land plant group that lives mostly in aquatic habitats, including our coastal environments. We will use large-scale surveys of whole plastid genomes to derive robust, densely sampled phylogenetic frameworks for this important group of plants. The proposed work includes considerable new training opportunities for students, including bioinformatic/ phylogenomic projects for undergraduate researchers.