nai

Project Progress

This project is aimed at using whole genome sequences to understand the Tree of Life. The project has made great progress during the reporting period. The project was initiated in late 1998, and the project soon had its first robust Tree of Life using super families of gene sequences as phylogenetic characters. During early 1999, the tree was analyzed in depth and expanded to include new genome sequences available. The results were published in November 1999 in Nucleic Acids Research. Since the publication of this first paper, the project was been expanded to include new genome sequences published. The paper was then featured prominently in a perspectives article published in Science in December 1999 (see Banfield and Marshall, 1999). We consider the progress to date to be excellent and on schedule.