Summary: AliView is an alignment viewer and editor designed to meet the requirements of next-generation sequencing era phylogenetic datasets. AliView handles alignments of unlimited size in the formats most commonly used, i.e. FASTA, Phylip, Nexus, Clustal and MSF. The intuitive graphical interface makes it easy to inspect, sort, delete, merge and realign sequences as part of the manual filtering process of large datasets. AliView also works as an easy-to-use alignment editor for small as well as large datasets.

Availability and implementation: AliView is released as open-source software under the GNU General Public License, version 3.0 (GPLv3), and is available at GitHub (www.github.com/AliView). The program is cross-platform and extensively tested on Linux, Mac OS X and Windows systems. Downloads and help are available at http://ormbunkar.se/aliview

Contact: es.uu.cbe@nossral.sredna

Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

/pdf/aliview-a-fast-and-lightweight-alignment-viewer-and-editor-1tl4qpn0m5.pdf

AliView: a fast and lightweight alignment viewer and editor for large datasets

The ancestors of fungi are believed to be simple aquatic forms with flagellated spores, similar to members of the extant phylum Chytridiomycota (chytrids). Current classifications assume that chytrids form an early-diverging clade within the kingdom Fungi and imply a single loss of the spore flagellum, leading to the diversification of terrestrial fungi. Here we develop phylogenetic hypotheses for Fungi using data from six gene regions and nearly 200 species. Our results indicate that there may have been at least four independent losses of the flagellum in the kingdom Fungi. These losses of swimming spores coincided with the evolution of new mechanisms of spore dispersal, such as aerial dispersal in mycelial groups and polar tube eversion in the microsporidia (unicellular forms that lack mitochondria). The enigmatic microsporidia seem to be derived from an endoparasitic chytrid ancestor similar to Rozella allomycis, on the earliest diverging branch of the fungal phylogenetic tree.

/pdf/reconstructing-the-early-evolution-of-fungi-using-a-six-gene-3jkdws90d6.pdf

Reconstructing the early evolution of Fungi using a six-gene phylogeny

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1096-0031.2010.00329.x

SequenceMatrix: concatenation software for the fast assembly of multi‐gene datasets with character set and codon information

Wood is a major pool of organic carbon that is highly resistant to decay, owing largely to the presence of lignin. The only organisms capable of substantial lignin decay are white rot fungi in the Agaricomycetes, which also contains non-lignin-degrading brown rot and ectomycorrhizal species. Comparative analyses of 31 fungal genomes (12 generated for this study) suggest that lignin-degrading peroxidases expanded in the lineage leading to the ancestor of the Agaricomycetes, which is reconstructed as a white rot species, and then contracted in parallel lineages leading to brown rot and mycorrhizal species. Molecular clock analyses suggest that the origin of lignin degradation might have coincided with the sharp decrease in the rate of organic carbon burial around the end of the Carboniferous period.

/pdf/the-paleozoic-origin-of-enzymatic-lignin-decomposition-4stwcdzzgi.pdf

The paleozoic origin of enzymatic lignin decomposition reconstructed from 31 fungal genomes

Taxonomy is the biological discipline that identifies, describes, classifies and names extant and extinct species and other taxa. Nowadays, species taxonomy is confronted with the challenge to fully incorporate new theory, methods and data from disciplines that study the origin, limits and evolution of species. Integrative taxonomy has been proposed as a framework to bring together these conceptual and methodological developments. Here we review perspectives for an integrative taxonomy that directly bear on what species are, how they can be discovered, and how much diversity is on Earth. We conclude that taxonomy needs to be pluralistic to improve species discovery and description, and to develop novel protocols to produce the much-needed inventory of life in a reasonable time. To cope with the large number of candidate species revealed by molecular studies of eukaryotes, we propose a classification scheme for those units that will facilitate the subsequent assembly of data sets for the formal description of new species under the Linnaean system, and will ultimately integrate the activities of taxonomists and molecular biologists.

/pdf/the-integrative-future-of-taxonomy-mpi03p4szl.pdf

W. P. Maddison

Papers

Mesquite: a modular system for evolutionary analysis. Version 2.6