Also known as
phylogenetics; an attempt to
organise life into a tree-like data structure. The '
root' is rather complicated, since life
emerged from more of a
soup than a single creature. This task is complicated by the difficulty of selecting the 'correct' (actual, historical) tree from the
forest of similar trees. It is a much more
rigorous process if done with molecular data (
protein sequence) rather than
anatomical information. However, disagreement over molecular evolution models (Shimomura's
neutral drift theory, for example) could give different results.
See: Clusters of Orthologous Groups.