Bojian Zhong

Citation

Thesis Title
Phylogenomics and Plant Evolution

Read article at Massey Research Online:

Phylogenomics (the study of evolutionary relationships among groups of organisms using genome-scale data) is central to our understanding of the evolution of life. There is now a large amount of genome-scale data available and there has been a rapid increase in methodological developments. However, there are basic problems in phylogenomic analyses of molecular sequences that have been overlooked. These problems may impede the accuracy and reliability of tree reconstruction. Mr Zhong examined plant phylogenomics and evolution in general. Using next-generation sequencing data, he evaluated and mitigated the systematic errors, applied more sophisticated models in order to improve phylogenetic inference, and developed a statistical test that provides confirmatory evidence for evolution.

Supervisors
Distinguished Professor David Penny
Professor Michael Hendy
Professor Peter Lockhart
Professor Masami Hasegawa