Collaborative Research: Arbor: Comparative Analysis Workflows for the Tree of Life

近年来，我们对生命之树的理解迅速增长。生命之树概括了生物体的进化关系。然而，解释和分析大型进化树已被证明是困难的。该项目将创建可视化工作流软件“Arbor”，以帮助科学家和公众了解生命之树的生长。Arbor将易于使用：任何人都可以通过创建他们的方法的特定工作流程来进行分析。用户将能够通过互联网轻松获取数据，并与其他人分享他们的Arbor工作流程，从而促进协作努力。最后，Arbor将很容易扩展，并能够随着新方法的发明而增长。Arbor将使“树思维”渗透到科学研究中，同时也为教室和博物馆提供广泛的教育推广。学生和公众从更好地理解所有物种之间的关系中受益匪浅。同样，我们开发的可视化工作流和用户界面将免费提供给编程社区，从而刺激更多的软件开发。最后，使科学界能够分析动态的生命之树，将使包括医学、公共卫生、农业、生态学和遗传学在内的广泛领域的新研究成为可能。

Our understanding of the tree of life, a tree that summarizes the evolutionary relationships of living organisms, has grown rapidly in recent years. However, interpreting and analyzing large evolutionary trees has proven difficult. This project will create visual workflow software, "Arbor", to help scientists and the general public understand the growing tree of life. Arbor will be easy to use: anyone will be able to carry out analyses by creating a specific workflow of their methods. Users will be able to easily obtain data over the internet and share their Arbor workflows with others, promoting collaborative efforts. Finally, Arbor will be easily expandable and able to grow as new methods are invented.Arbor will enable "tree-thinking" to permeate scientific research, while also providing extensive educational outreach to classrooms and museums. Students and the general public benefit tremendously from a better understanding of the relationships among all species. Likewise, the visual workflows and user interfaces we develop will be freely available to the programming community, stimulating additional software development. Finally, enabling the scientific community to analyze the dynamic tree of life will enable new research across a tremendous range of fields, including medicine, public health, agriculture, ecology, and genetics.