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NSF PR 02-94 - November 18, 2002
Discovering the Tree of Life
NSF awards grants to
discover the relationships of 1.75 million species
One of the most profound ideas to emerge in modern
science is Charles Darwin's concept that all of life,
from the smallest microorganism to the largest vertebrate,
is connected through genetic relatedness in a vast
genealogy. This "Tree of Life" summarizes all we know
about biological diversity and underpins much of modern
biology, yet many of its branches remain poorly known
and unresolved.
To help scientists discover what Darwin described as
the tree's "everbranching and beautiful ramifications,"
the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded
$17 million in "Assembling the Tree of Life" grants
to researchers at more than 25 institutions. Their
studies range from investigations of entire pieces
of DNA to assemble the bacterial branches; to the
study of the origins of land plants from algae; to
understanding the most diverse group of terrestrial
predators, the spiders; to the diversity of fungi
and parasitic roundworms; to the relationships of
birds and dinosaurs.
"Despite the enormity of the task," said Quentin Wheeler,
director of NSF's division of environmental biology,
which funded the awards, "now is the time to reconstruct
the tree of life. The conceptual, computational and
technological tools are available to rapidly resolve
most, if not all, major branches of the tree of life.
At the same time, progress in many research areas
from genomics to evolution and development is currently
encumbered by the lack of a rigorous historical framework
to guide research." Scientists estimate that the 1.75
million known species are only 10 percent of the total
species on earth, and that many of those species will
disappear in the decades ahead. Learning about these
species and their evolutionary history is epic in
its scope, spanning all the life forms of an entire
planet over its several billion year history, said
Wheeler.
Why is assembling the tree of life so important? The
tree is a picture of historical relationships that
explains all similarities and differences among plants,
animals and microorganisms. Because it explains biological
diversity, the Tree of Life has proven useful in many
fields, such as choosing experimental systems for
biological research, determining which genes are common
to many kinds of organisms and which are unique, tracking
the origin and spread of emerging diseases and their
vectors, bio-prospecting for pharmaceutical and agrochemical
products, developing data bases for genetic information,
and evaluating risk factors for species conservation
and ecosystem restoration.
The Assembling the Tree of Life grants provide support
for large multi-investigator, multi-institutional,
international teams of scientists who can combine
expertise and data sources, from paleontology to morphology,
developmental biology, and molecular biology, says
Wheeler. The awards will also involve developing software
for improved visualization and analysis of extremely
large data sets, and outreach and education programs
in comparative phylogenetic biology and paleontology,
emphasizing new training activities, informal science
education, and Internet resources and dissemination.
For a list of the Assembling the Tree of Life grants,
see: http://www.nsf.gov/bio/pubs/awards/atol_02.htm
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