A new initiative aims to build a grand tree of life that brings together everything scientists know about how all living things are related, from the tiniest bacteria to the tallest tree.
Scientists have been building evolutionary trees for more than 150 years, ever since Charles Darwin drew the first sketches in his notebook. But despite significant progress in fleshing out the major branches of the tree of life, today there is still no central place where researchers can go to browse and download the entire tree.
"Where can you go to see their collective results in one resource? The surprising thing is you can't — at least not yet," said Dr. Karen Cranston of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center.
But now, thanks to a three-year, $5.76 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation, a team of scientists and developers from ten universities aims to make that a reality.
Phys.orgThe tree of life links all biodiversity through a shared evolutionary history. This project will produce the first online, comprehensive first-draft tree of all 1.8 million named species, accessible to both the public and scientific communities. Assembly of the tree will incorporate previously-published results, with strong collaborations between computational and empirical biologists to develop, test and improve methods of data synthesis.
This initial tree of life will not be static; instead, we will develop tools for scientists to update and revise the tree as new data come in. Early release of the tree and tools will motivate data sharing and facilitate ongoing synthesis of knowledge.
http://opentreeoflife.wordpress.com/project-summary/Pretty excited for this.