Speaker: Dr. Wu Taoyang

Time (1):July 26 (Tuesday), 2016, 10:30am

Venue (1): KIZ main building, conference room 327

Time (2): July 27 (Wednesday), 2016, 10:30pm

Venue (2): Southwest biodiversity Research Center, conference room 124

Everyone is welcome!

Abstract: Since Darwin, a phylogenetic tree has been the principal model for the study of evolutionary relationships for biological systems ranging from genes to species.  However, network approaches have become increasingly appreciated due to their ability to accommodate reticulate patterns resulted from a number of evolutionary processes, such as recombination, hybridisation, and horizontal gene transfer.

In this talk, we will begin with an introduction to phylogenetic networks. Next, we will present some recent work on rooted phylogenetic networks and how to infer them from sequence data, including a discussion of Trilonet (https://www.uea.ac.uk/computing/trilonet), a tool recently developed for inferring phylogenetic networks.  Finally, we will discuss a number of challenges and open problems in phylogenetic analysis. The concepts will be treated in a way accessible to a general technical audience.

Reference:

Huber, K.T., van Iersel, L., Moulton, V., and Wu, T. (2015) How much information is needed to infer reticulate evolutionary histories?  Systematic Biology, 64: 102-111.

Oldman, J*., Wu, T*., van Iersel, L., and  Moulton, V., TriLoNet: Piecing together small networks to reconstruct reticulate evolutionary histories. Molecular Biology and Evolution, in press (doi:10.1093/molbev/msw068).

Short Biography

Dr Taoyang Wu (https://www.uea.ac.uk/computing/people/profile/taoyang-wu) received a B.Eng. degree in mechanics from Harbin Institute of Technology, a M.Sc. degree in mathematics from Peking University, and a Ph.D. degree in computing sciences from Queen Mary, University of London. After a postdoctoral position at the National University of Singapore, he is currently a Lecturer in computational biology at the University of East Anglia.

His research interest includes computational and mathematical biology, with a focus on phylogenetic and evolutionary analysis. He has published 30 peer-reviewed papers in international journals, including recent publications in Bioinformatics, Molecular Biology & Evolution, and Systematic Biology. Moreover, he has also developed several software tools, with applications ranging from recombination detection for ocean diatoms to the selection of indicator species for monitoring the biodiversity of European forests.