Assembling the Tree of Life

A flood of new information, from whole-genome sequences to detailed structural information to inventories of earth's biota to greater appreciation of the importance of lateral gene transfer in shaping evolutionary history, is transforming 21st century biology. Along with comparative data on morphology, fossils, development, behavior, and interactions of all forms of life on earth, these new data streams make even more critical the need for an organizing evolutionary context. Phylogeny, the genealogical map for all lineages of life on earth, provides an overall framework to facilitate biological information retrieval, prediction and analysis. Currently, single investigators or small teams of researchers are studying the evolutionary pathways of heredity usually concentrating on taxonomic groups of modest size. Assembly of a framework phylogeny, or Tree of Life, for all 1.7 million described species requires a greatly magnified effort, often involving large teams working across institutions and disciplines. This is the overall goal of the Assembling the Tree of Life activity. The National Science Foundation announces its intention to continue support of creative and innovative research that will resolve evolutionary relationships for large groups of organisms throughout the history of life. Investigators also will be supported for projects in data acquisition, analysis, algorithm development and dissemination in computational phylogenetics and phyloinformatics.