Wikipedia
RedToL, or Red Algal Tree of Life, is part of the collaborative National Science Foundation Assembling the Tree of Life activity (AToL), funded through the Division of Environmental Biology, Directorate for Biological Sciences. The overall goal of AToL is to resolve evolutionary relationships for large groups of organisms throughout the history of life, with the research often involving large teams working across institutions and disciplines. Investigators are typically supported for projects in data acquisition, analysis, algorithm development and dissemination in computational phylogenetics and phyloinformatics.
The Phylogenetic and Genomic Approaches to Reconstructing the Red Algal Tree of Life focus on the Rhodophyta ( red algae), one of the most ancient eukaryotic phyla with fossil evidence for Bangiales stretching back 1.2 billion years. Red algae are not only key members of marine and freshwater aquatic environments but they are sources for important human foods such as dulse and sushi wrap, and have a multitude of pharmaceutical and industrial uses (e.g., agarose and carrageenans). Perhaps most important is the role red algae played in symbiogenesis. A red alga was the ancient (>1 billion years ago) donor of the plastid in chlorophyll c-containing algae ( chromalveolates) that rose to prominence in marine ecosystems after the end of Permian with groups such as diatoms currently providing ca. 20% of global fixed carbon.