In the World of Biology Art

This week, I was in lab trying to figure out how to turn a complicated phylogenetic tree to a simple and meaningful tree in order to be able to interpret it. After many attempts, i finally end up with a tree (picture below). This tree was constructed using the parsimonious idea which is a method used to construct a type of phylogenetic tree based on the idea that the best route is the one that require the fewest evolutionary changes. So, that was the idea that i used to come up with my phylogenetic tree. Like i said, i used this week trying to figure it out and i was not easy at all because after each trial i have to go back and check with the original tree generated by the computer software to see if everything matches very well. The bad thing with this is you are not going to know ahead if what you are doing is actually right or wrong until you finish it and then check. And i did like three trials before getting it right. After doing that, I used the flowchart in the Microsoft Word to represent the tree. This procedure also took me awhile to do because the tree was too long and i have to find a way to put it on one page. So pretty much this week in the lab, it was all about drawing, drawing and drawing. That is when the beauty of art comes in the biology. I spent also some of my time in the lab trying to read my peers' blogs to see what they are doing. I can tell that everybody is working on an exciting project and the blogs look good. I wish good luck to everybody especially those that will be presenting at the ASU conference. Next week, the game plan in the lab will be to finish up completely with the tree by doing some resizing and also annotation. I am also looking forward of interpreting these trees and start putting up my poster for the ASU conference. I am very excited to be selected for such a conference. I think this will be a very great experience for me and also for each and every one of us presenting there. As a student, this opportunity is one of the best that can happen to me and I am so grateful.
                                       I started from this...

    to construct this...