Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

Molecular biology and genomics are revolutionizing our understanding of the history of Life on Earth. Within our lifetimes, it seems likely that we will finally realize Darwin's dream that "...we shall have very fairly true genealogical trees of each great kingdom of nature...". Indeed, some of the most exciting long-standing problems in biology have concerned the nature of these 'great kingdoms of nature' and how they came to be. The development sophisticated computational methods in recent years has allowed us to unlock the evolutionary information residing in genome sequences of organisms. From comparing genomes this way, we have begun to clarify the broad outlines of the tree of Life. We are also gaining insights into the pattern and process of how the genomes of organisms, from microbes to humans, evolve.  This application is to acquire a powerful Apple computer cluster that will be used by a collaborative team of interdisciplinary researchers at Dalhousie University. Our research program is aimed at determining the major groups of the tree of Life and elucidating the evolutionary mechanisms by genes, proteins and genomes evolved over the last 3.5 billion years by developing and applying complex computer-based statistical methods for reconstructing evolutionary history.