May 2020 PAFTOL-GAP collaboration

We are very excited to announce our collaboration with the Plant and Fungal Trees of Life (PAFTOL) initiative based at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew! The PAFTOL team, led by Dr Bill Baker, created the Angiosperm353 probe kit, a universal toolkit for targeted sequencing of 353 genes from flowering plants. Both the GAP Phylogenomics pilot and first stage of the Australian Angiosperm Tree of Life (AAToL) will be utilising the Angiosperm353 probe kit. Approximately 1, 500 sequence data will be generated from these GAP Phylogenomics projects. The specimens will be contributed from all major Australian herbaria (AD, BRI, CANB, CNS, DNA, HO, MEL, PERTH, NSW, UNE).

PAFTOL and GAP Initiatives are jointly interested in sharing genetic data, bioinformatics pipelines and fostering collaborations with researchers across both initiatives. The agreement outlining the PAFTOL-GAP collaboration can be found here.