Phylogenetic Analysis of Whole Genomes (Keynote Talk)

摘要

The rapidly increasing number of sequenced genomes offers the chance to resolve longstanding questions about the evolutionary history of certain groups of organisms, to develop a better understanding of evolution, to make substantial advances in functional genomics, and to start bridging genomics and genetics. Comparative genomics is the term used today for much of the work carried out in whole-genome analysis, correctly emphasizing that the "guilt-by-association" approach used in the analysis of gene and regulatory sequences remains the fundamental tool in the analysis of whole genomes. However, the limitations of pairwise comparisons are even more severe in whole-genome analysis than in sequence analysis and, of course, pairwise comparisons have little to tell us about evolution. Thus we are witnessing a significant increase in phylogenetic research based, not on sequence data, but on larger-scale features of the genome, such as genomic rearrangements, duplications and losses of genomic regions, regulatory modules and networks, chromatin structure, etc.