The goal of this project is to determine the evolutionary relationships among the Enterobacteria. Enterobacteria are a diverse family of bacteria that occupy a wide variety of environments including both plant and animal hosts, and many are biomedically or agriculturally relevant. Genome sequences of members of this family are abundant, but are almost exclusively limited to a small number of species associated with human diseases. This project will sequence the genomes of 100 additional previously neglected species, and use these data to reconstruct the phylogeny of the group.
Evolutionary analysis of bacteria and some other groups of organisms is complicated by their ability to exchange genetic material between species, which causes inference of conflicting relationships between different regions of the genomes. To tackle this problem, a multidisciplinary team of biologists, statisticians and computer scientists will develop new methods of analysis. These new approaches will allow resolution of the relationships between nearly all regions of enterobacterial genomes, and provide tools for other researchers studying different groups. In addition, development of educational modules will allow incorporation of this work into the training of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin, and beyond. A public database will be created to encourage use of these genome sequences by any interested party.
