How to Build a Better Tree of Life

from Seed

Organizing the world's species into branches on a phylogenetic tree is a major goal of biologists trying to understand how life evolved.

DNA-sequencing technologies are providing them with more information than ever with which to accomplish this goal, but with less than 1 percent of all species currently placed in any kind of phylogeny, there is still much work to be done.

In a recent paper in Science, researchers at the University of Texas at Austin introduced new tree-building software that could expand the tree of life and change our understanding of evolution.