What is Clann?
Clann (the Irish word for "family"), is a free software program designed and written by Chris Creevey at the Bioinformatics and Pharmacogenomics Laboratory at NUI Maynooth. The purpose of the program is to implement methods of determining the optimal phylogenetic supertree, given a set of input source trees.
Where has Clann been described?
Creevey C. J. and McInerney, J. O. 2005 Clann: Investigating phylogenetic information through supertree analyses. Bioinformatics 21 (3): 390-2. pdf
Creevey C.J., Fitzpatrick DA, Philip GK, Kinsella RJ, O'connell MJ, Pentony MM, Travers SA, Wilkinson M, McInerney JO. 2004 Does a tree-like phylogeny only exist at the tips in the prokaryotes? Proc R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 271(1557):2551-8. pdf
Where else have we used Clann?
Philip, G.K., Creevey, C.J. and McInerney, J.O. (2005). The Opisthokonta and the Ecdysozoa may not be Clades: Stronger Support for the Grouping of Plant and Animal than for Animal and Fungi and Stronger Support for the Coelomata than Ecdysozoa. Molecular Biology and Evolution 22, 1175-1184. pdf
Fitzpatrick, D.A., Creevey, C.J. and McInerney, J.O. (2006). Genome Phylogenies Indicate a Meaningful alpha-Proteobacterial Phylogeny and Support A Grouping of the Mitochondria With the Rickettsiales. Molecular Biology and Evolution 23(1):74-85.pdf
What is the grand challenge for this software?
Charles Darwin wrote in a letter to Thomas Henry Huxley: "The time may come (though I may not live to see it), when we shall have fairly true genealogies of each great kingdom of Nature". We still don't have these genealogies for all of life and that is the grand challenge.
