Scientists create the first digital �tree of life�

Agencies, Washington: Scientists from 11 organizations have digitized a “tree of life,” a genetic map of 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes that all branched off over time from a common ancestor.
In a September 18 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers wrote that "The Open Tree Taxonomy" is likely the first to aggregate tens of thousands of already published smaller trees into a comprehensive map of all life. The digital tree is free for anyone to use and update on
opentreeoflife.org. In what looks like a kaleidoscope of rainbow-colored high-rises, the latest digital diagram
depicts the evolution of living things since the beginning of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago.
And because scientists believe that all life on Earth shares a common genetic ancestor, understanding how millions of species are related helps them improve agricultural methods and better understand viruses, the research team says.
"There's a pretty big gap between the sum of what scientists know about how living things are related, and what's actually available digitally," lead scientist Karen Cranston, a computational phylogeneticist at Duke University, said in an announcement of the project.
Only one out of six studies published in about 100 journals in the decade leading up to 2012 have digital data that others can use, the researchers reported. Most of the 7,500 phylogenetic – or evolutionary branching – trees are in PDF or image formats that cannot be readily downloaded and merged with other data. For this reason, the first version of the tree of life is based only on 484 trees that map the genetic evolution of species, from worm to beetle to human to giraffe.

 

Scientists create the first digital �tree of life�

Agencies, Washington: Scientists from 11 organizations have digitized a tree of life, a genetic map of 2.3 million named species of animals, plants, fungi and microbes that all branched off over time from a common ancestor. In a September 18 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers wrote that The Open Tree Taxonomy is likely the first to aggregate tens of thousands of already published smaller trees into a comprehensive map of all life. The digital tree is free for anyone to use and update on opentreeoflife.org. In what looks like a kaleidoscope of rainbow-colored high-rises, the latest digital diagram depicts the evolution of living things since the beginning of life on Earth more than 3.5 billion years ago. And because scientists believe that all life on Earth shares a common genetic ancestor, understanding how millions of species are related helps them improve agricultural methods and better understand viruses, the research team says. Theres a pretty big gap between the sum of what scientists know about how living things are related, and whats actually available digitally, lead scientist Karen Cranston, a computational phylogeneticist at Duke University, said in an announcement of the project. Only one out of six studies published in about 100 journals in the decade leading up to 2012 have digital data that others can use, the researchers reported. Most of the 7,500 phylogenetic or evolutionary branching trees are in PDF or image formats that cannot be readily downloaded and merged with other data. For this reason, the first version of the tree of life is based only on 484 trees that map the genetic evolution of species, from worm to beetle to human to giraffe.