I study the early evolution of life using phylogenetic and comparative genomic methods (that is, with bioinfomatics, on a computer). The key questions relate to the nature of early life, the phylogeny of prokaryotes, the processes of microbial/genome evolution, and the origin of eukaryotic cells.

Current group members include:

• Dr. Paul O. Sheridan (NERC PDRA, with Cecile Gubry-Rangin, Aberdeen): genome evolution of Thaumarchaeota
• Dr. Christopher Kay (BBSRC PDRA, with Wendy Gibson, Bristol): trypanosome genomics
• Dr. James Clark (Leverhulme PDRA, with Alistair Hetherington, Bristol): plant phylogeny
• Edmund Moody (Royal Society PhD student): early evolution and the "tree of life"
• Brogan Harris (PhD student, with Alistair Hetherington, Bristol): gene family evolution in land plants
• Matt Tarnowski (PhD student, with Tom Gorochowski, Bristol): using evolutionary information in synthetic biology
• Erika Griss Pascuali (MSc Res student): eukaryote evolution 

Get in touch if you are interested in joining, particularly if you want to work on "deep time" phylogenetics of prokaryotes or microbial eukaryotes.

You can find more information at Google Scholar, on Twitter (@tweethinking), or on Github (Tancata).