Huge Genome-scale Phylogenetic Study Of Birds Rewrites Evolutionary Tree-of-life
Thursday, June 26, 2008 - 21:21
in Biology & Nature
The largest ever study of bird genetics redraws the avian evolutionary tree, challenges current classifications, alters our understanding of avian evolution, and provides a resource for future studies. Early Bird, centered at the Field Museum, examined DNA from all major living bird groups. Scientists built and analyzed a dataset of more than 32 kilobases of nuclear DNA sequences from 19 locations on the DNA of each of 169 species -- equivalent to a small genome project.