Abstract Detail

Angiosperms353: A new essential tool for plant systematics

Completing the Flowering Plant Tree of Life with Angiosperms353.

Discovering the tree of life is among the most fundamental of the grand challenges remaining in science today. With new phylogenomic methods, it is now possible to build increasingly complete phylogenetic hypotheses based on broad genomic sampling. The Plant and Fungal Trees of Life (PAFTOL) project at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew aims to generate phylogenomic data for every genus of plant and fungi. In this talk, we report our progress towards completing a genus-level phylogeny of angiosperms. To achieve our goal, we developed the Angiosperms353 toolkit for target sequence capture, with which we have now sequenced over 5000 samples covering more than 30% of the 14,000 angiosperm genera. In addition to the reconstruction of higher-level relationships, we have also gained insights into the application of Angiosperms353 to species-level questions, including within rapid radiations, indicating the great potential of this toolkit in comparative and evolutionary biology. We have also shed light on data recovery on a broad phylogenetic scale. We found that the toolkit yields good quality data across angiosperms and even from challenging samples (such as herbarium specimens up to 200 years old). PAFTOL subscribes to an open data agenda and aims to release its data early and often via the Kew Tree of Life Explorer. This new web portal will provide access to raw data, intermediates (assembled data, alignments, gene trees) and a navigable tree of life based on all released data. The universal nature of Angiosperms353 provides important opportunities for future integration of phylogenomic data. To achieve this, transparent and open mechanisms for collaboration and data sharing will be essential.

Related Links:
PAFTOL Website
Kew Tree of Life Explorer

1 - Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Comparative Plant and Fungal Biology, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 3AE, United Kingdom

Keywords:
phylogenomics
Phylogenetics
tree of life
Angiosperms353
angiosperm
HybSeq
Target Enrichment
open data.

Presentation Type: Symposium Presentation
Session: SY4, Angiosperms353: A new essential tool for plant systematics
Location: Virtual/Virtual
Date: Thursday, July 30th, 2020
Time: 10:30 AM
Number: SY4002
Abstract ID:279
Candidate for Awards:None