This document summarizes a talk on phylogenomics and the diversity and diversification of microbes. The talk discussed several topics:
1) It introduced phylogenomics and described how limited sampling of microbial diversity has been from rRNA studies.
2) It discussed examples of mechanisms of novelty originating from within genomes, such as UV repair mechanisms in H. volcanii compared to E. coli.
3) It outlined how phylogenomic methods can be used to infer the likely functions of genes of interest by identifying homologs, aligning sequences, constructing gene trees, and overlaying known functions onto the tree. However, these methods may not work as well for very recently evolved functions.
4) It