Abstract Detail

Phylogeny and evolution of angiosperms in the era of next generation sequencing

Ma, Hong [1], Soltis, Douglas [2], Soltis, Pamela S. [3], Leebens-Mack, Jim [4].

Phylogeny and evolution of angiosperms in the era of next generation sequencing.

Angiosperms are the most diverse group of land plants with an estimated total of ~400,000 species and an immense impact on most terrestrial ecosystems. In addition, nearly all major crops as well as widely studied model plants are angiosperms. Therefore, understanding the phylogeny and evolution of angiosperms provides an essential foundation for many fields of plant biology, including biogeographic investigations, biodiversity and phylogenetic diversity studies of ecosystems, evolutionary-developmental biology, translational research from models to crops and other comparative studies of a wide range of plant species. With the rapid advances in next-generation sequencing technologies, not only can whole plastid genome sequences be readily obtained, but tens of thousands of nuclear gene sequences can also be generated at relatively low costs. The ever-increasing size of phylogenomic datasets has also motivated development of new analysis tools. Together, these advances have facilitated phylogenetic analyses of angiosperms and even other green plants at an unprecedented scale both in depth of gene sequencing and number of taxa. This use of "big data" reduces the chance of misleading or incorrect relationships sometimes associated with analyses using few taxa or few genes, while increasing the opportunity to detect discordance among nuclear gene histories and between nuclear and plastid data. In addition to community-driven initiatives such as 1KP (1000 land plants), 10KP and Open Green Genomes, individual labs are generating massive sequence datasets for phylogenomic analyses across evolutionary time scales. Moreover, concerted inference of gene trees and species trees is shedding new light on the evolutionary processes contributing to diversification. Improved understanding of these processes has implications for the use of species and gene phylogenies in comparative analyses aimed at elucidating the molecular basis of evolutionary innovations and the genetic basis of phenotypic diversity. Therefore, it is an excellent time to organize a symposium focusing on the phylogeny and evolution of angiosperms. The selected speakers include both junior and female scientists, will present both recent findings with their implications and new initiatives aimed at greatly expanding the scope and impact of phylogenomics/phylotranscriptomic efforts to more lineages of angiosperms and non-angiosperm groups.

1 - The Pennsylvania State University, Biology, The Huck Institutes of Life Sciences, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
2 - University of Florida, Biology, Gainesville, FL
3 -
4 - University of Georgia, Plant Biology, Athens, GA

Keywords:
Angiosperm phylogenomics
Next generation sequencing
Phylogenomics methods
Families with crop plants
Community genomics projects.

Presentation Type: Symposium Presentation
Session: SY6, Phylogeny and evolution of angiosperms in the era of next generation sequencing
Location: 102/Mayo Civic Center
Date: Wednesday, July 25th, 2018
Time: 1:30 PM
Number: SY6SUM
Abstract ID:29
Candidate for Awards:None