"Most
Comprehensive Tree Of Life"
For 2.3
Million Species Created Tree Species Life Researchers From bacteria to buffalo
and mushrooms to minke whales, researchers have for the first time been able to
piece together the evolutionary tree of all 2.3 million named species of
animals, plants, fungi and microbes. This incredible tree of life shows the
relationships among all known living species, tracing the origin of life
through 3.5 billion years of evolution.
Created
through the collaboration of eleven institutions, this first draft is a
composite of roughly 500 smaller trees that have been published over the years
and now combined into a single tree that is available free online for anyone to
use or edit. “This is the first real attempt to connect the dots and put it all
together,” said Karen Cranston from Duke University in a statement. Cranston
was one of the principle investigators of the project, which has been published
in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “Think of it as Version
1.0.”
The tree
of life is effectively a diagram that shows the evolutionary relationships
between all living organisms. The branching indicates how different species all
descend from a common ancestor. Not just useful for working out how different
species are related, they can also be used to assess the origin and spread of
infectious diseases, or discover new antibiotics, among other things.
While
this initial draft uses data from 500 separate smaller trees, far more data has
already been published, accounting for tens of thousands of evolutionary – or
phylogenetic – trees. The problem is that only a fraction of those, the
researchers estimate about one in six, have deposited their data in a digital,
downloadable format that can then be used and added to the single super tree.
Most are published as PDFs and other image files that are simply impossible to
enter into the new diagram. The researchers see this as the first step in
developing the most comprehensive archive of all life on Earth.
Another major
problem that they had to overcome was simply accounting for the changes in
names, alternate names, misspellings and abbreviations of species used by
different researchers and institutions. Spiny anteaters, for example, once
shared their scientific name with a group of moray eels. For this reason the
whole project is open access, meaning that anyone can go in and edit the data
if and when changes are needed. The researchers refer to it as the “Wikipedia”
for evolutionary trees.
The
resulting diagram has allowed the researchers to see not just what we know
about life on Earth, but what we don’t know too. To fill in these gaps,
particularly in the branches that contain the insects and bacteria, they hope
to develop software that will allow researchers to enter the tree and add in
the data when new species are discovered or named. “It's by no means finished,”
concludes Cranston. “It's critically important to share data for
already-published and newly-published work if we want to improve the tree.”
This circular family tree of Earth’s lifeforms is considered a first draft of
the 3.5-billion-year history of how life evolved and diverged. Duke University.”
Source: http://www.disclose.tv/news/most_comprehensive_tree_of_life_for_23_million_species_created/122655?utm_content=buffer9270e&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer
No comments:
Post a Comment