`ITR/AP: Collaborative Research: Exploring the Tree of Life

定义和理解物种之间的进化关系是当代生物学的基础，也是比较方法在生命科学中的应用的基础。这种进化研究的结果可以用物种间亲缘关系的分支序列来表示，称为系统发育。由于系统发育与树的分支在几何上的相似性，系统发育可以被认为是生命之树。这项由德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校和纽约市立大学雷曼学院的生物学家和计算机科学家提出的合作研究将提供专门的可视化和数据挖掘工具，以促进为地球上所有生物创建“生命之树”。这包括开发和改进算法，以可视化和分析大量物种的多个复杂数据集。更具体地说，该项目将：(1)通过计算机科学家开发的可视化和聚类技术整合生物数据；(2)将这些工具应用于包含大量物种的分类群，这些物种具有拓扑复杂和不同的树结构。这个由生物学家和计算机科学家组成的跨学科团队将把他们新开发的软件与系统生物学中现有的计算工具集成在一起，并使它们免费提供给科学界并易于使用。该项目涉及实质性的努力，为本科生和来自代表性不足群体的学生提供在整个学年和夏季与科学家合作的机会。

0121682 and 0121651Amenta, Hillis, and St. JohnDefining and understanding the evolutionary relationships among species is fundamental to contemporary biology and the application of the comparative method in the life sciences. The results of such evolutionary research can be represented by a branching sequence of relatedness among species known as a phylogeny. Because of the geometric resemblance of a phylogeny to the branches of a tree, a phylogeny can be thought of as a tree of life. The proposed collaborative research by biologists and computer scientists at University of Texas-Austin and at CUNY-Lehman College in New York will provide specialized visualization and data mining tools to facilitate creation of a "Tree of Life" for all living organisms on the earth. This includes the development and refinement of algorithms to visualize and analyze multiple complex data sets for large numbers of species. More specifically, this project will: (1) integrate biological data through visualization and clustering techniques developed by computer scientists, and (2) apply these tools to taxa which comprise very large numbers of species with topologically complex and varied tree structures. The interdisciplinary team of biologists and computer scientists will integrate their newly developed software with existing computational tools in systematic biology, and make them freely available to and easily used by the scientific community. The project involves substantive efforts to provide undergraduates and students from under-represented groups with the opportunity to collaborate with scientists throughout the academic year and summer.