EXPLORING THE TREE OF LIFE: MOLECULAR SYSTEMATICS AT THE FIELD MUSEUM

                       Jennifer Steinbachs
                     Computational Biologist
                        Dept of Botany
                       The Field Museum
                     Chicago, IL 60605-2496
                      stein@fmppr.fmnh.org

Sue,  Cartier,  Underground Adventure - only some of the current
exhibits that one might see visiting the Field Museum over the next few
weeks.  Once a year, Members have the opportunity to visit behind the
scenes and tour the collections - almost 23 million specimens in total,
spanning the departments of anthropology, botany, geology and zoology,
including bowls and baskets, pressed plants, rocks and fossils,
skeletons and  stuffed "skins", photos, rare books, films and even DNA. 
A recent addition (and well-kept secret) to the Museum, the Pritzker
Laboratory of Molecular Systematics and Evolution houses an automated
DNA sequencer and now a high-performance computer cluster.  In this
seminar, I will highlight some of the research currently in progress in
the Pritzker Lab, notably the ongoing investigations of some of the
curators associated with the Lab, ranging from the molecular systematics
of Neotropical birds to similar studies in ferns and lichenized fungi. 
I will also describe our new computer cluster and identify the computing
hurdles we face in molecular systematics and evolution.