There are a number of possible topics. We just indicate some possible
themes here. We intend to ask the Bioconsensus community for
suggestions. First of all should this Tree of Life really be a tree,
or is some other data structure a more plausible model? Certainly
certain local portions of evolutionary structure should be tree-like,
but when these local structures are assembled, should they form a
supertree or some more general structure? Here we wish to compare
mathematical theory with current research trends in the biological
community. We hope that the biologists will suggest areas they find
useful, as opposed to mathematicians just suggesting models of
interest to them.
How does one handle possible errors in the data? What about missing
data? Certainly statistics must play a role here, but we need also to
study combinatorial methods, consensus methods, some notion of
approximate compatibility analysis, generalized pyramids, and some
form of cluster analysis. How, for example, should one deal with
reticulate evolution? Should errors in data be dealt with by allowing
alternate models of evolution, or by allowing reversals and overlap or
is there some other technique dependent upon the data? There is a need
to develop better techniques for handling microarray data as
well. Here new consensus or classification techniques need to be
developed. Thought should also be given to the development of
appropriate measures of dissimilarity. Are there any techniques other
than string matching of interest to the biological community?
Existing methods of supertree construction should be compared with
simulations. The NP-completeness of current techniques should be
tested, and where appropriate fast approximate algorithms (heuristics)
should be developed. Is there a role for compatibility analysis?
What about parsimony? There is a need to compare MRP methods with
other methods of constructing a supertree. There is a need even to
arrive at an acceptable definition of a supertree. How does one deal
with massive data sets to derive an accurate Tree of Life?
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Document last modified on March 11, 2003.