While adding more data can clarify relationships between organisms and place them on the tree of life, sometimes more data can make the picture look fuzzier. "[J]ust as the spinal column and limbs created contrasting maps of primate evolution, scientists now know that different genes in the same organism can tell different stories," writes Emily Singer at Wired.

Researchers are now turning to algorithms to sort out such phylogenetic relationships, Singer adds. In a recent Nature paper, researchers from Vanderbilt University used a common concatenation approach to build a phylogenetic tree based on 1,070 genes and 23 yeast species and they further built a series of trees based on the genes individually. They then tried to reconcile their trees. However, "none of the 1,070 gene trees agreed with each other, with the concatenation phylogeny or with the [extended majority-rule consensus] phylogeny," the researchers write.

"I am not so sure we know what the true relationships are," Yale University's Michael Donoghue, who was not part of the study, tells Singer. "If we aren't sure what the truth is, we can't tell if we have the right tree."

A hearing held by the House of Representatives science committee earlier this week examined the Obama administration's plan to reorganize US science education programs, ScienceInsider reports. The reorganization would affect some 226 programs at a dozen agencies, consolidating them and moving them to under the aegis of just three agencies, the Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Smithsonian.

While ScienceInsider notes that the proceedings were bereft of partisan bickering, "that comity resulted in a steady stream of skepticism flowing from both sides of the aisle." In particular, legislators seemed concerned about the fate of programs currently at National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, whose budgets would decrease under the administration's plan.

"Normally, I support efforts to reduce duplicative programs," Representative Randy Hultgren (R-Ill.) said at the hearing. "But this reorganization seems rushed and poorly planned. The president's proposal seems to be taking a number of successful initiatives being done by high-quality groups at the local level and running a majority of them through a federal bureaucracy in Washington."

John Holdren, the president's science adviser, told the panel that the reorganization favored programs for "improving K-12 instruction, reforming undergrad programs around evidence based practices, streamlining the graduate fellowship process, and amplifying engagement activities," according to ScienceInsider.

More than 70 research organizations from across the world have joined together to develop a common framework to share genetic and clinical data, the New York Times reports. Among the organizations that have signed the letter of intent for this effort are the US National Institutes of Health, the Wellcome Trust, BGI-Shenzhen, and Genome Canada, GenomeWeb Daily News adds.

"The question is whether and how we make it possible to learn from these data as they grow, in a manner that respects the autonomy and privacy choices of each participant," David Altshuler from the Broad Institute tells the Times.

According to the white paper put together by the group, the aim of the effort is to develop a global alliance and technological tools for secure data storage that conform to standard principles.

Genomics researchers are 'hotter' than those working in any other field, according to an analysis by Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch that gauges how 'hot' a researcher was during the last year by how many times their recent papers were cited.

Genomics investigators accounted for a sizable section of the hottest boffins in 2012, and the most scorching of these was Richard Wilson at Washington University School of Medicine, who was part of the team behind the Nature report "A Map of Human Genome Variation from Population-scale Sequencing" that detailed findings from the 1,000 Genomes Project. Wilson had 15 total papers from 2010 to 2012 that were cited last year.

Some familiar faces are strewn among the fieriest of the researchers working in genomics during the last year, but some new names crept into the list of the scientists with the most oft-cited papers.

Broad Institute Director and President Eric Lander is still on fire, Thomson found, as he contributed to that Nature paper as well, and he had an additional 12 other highly cited reports, which included genomics research into cancers of the ovaries, blood, and brain, and a report on missing heritability that was among the year's hottest papers. Lander was the hottest on the list during the two previous years.

Decode Genetics President Kari Stefansson made a comeback, jumping to the top of the genomics pyre after missing it last year. He had 13 reports on genomic aspects of Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer's cited last year.

Three of Wilson's fellow Washington University in St. Louis investigators joined him on the hot list, including Elaine Mardis, Li Ding, and Robert Fulton. They contributed to the same 1,000 Genomes paper and authored two other reports that landed in the top papers of the year. University of Michigan biostatistician Goncalo Abecasis, another author on the Nature paper, landed on the list for a dozen recent papers on GWAS studies of diabetes, body-mass index, and cardiovascular disease risk.

Jun Wang from BGI also made the list with 14 hot papers.

The University of Birmingham's Gregory Lip popped up in the survey for the first time, due to his reports on various aspects of atrial fibrillation.

Another newcomer, Rob Knight, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at the University of Colorado, made the hot list for 14 papers that examined the human microbiome.

The US National Cancer Institute asked and the community answered. The verdict: cloud-based public repositories of co-located cancer data and computing resources would be a welcome development — but there are a few things that should be taking into consideration.

In a post on its blog, the NCI's informatics arm reports that it received 68 responses to a solicitation letter from the NCI Head Harold Varmus asking for input on the development of the so-called cancer knowledge clouds.

In their answers, summarized here, the researchers ask that the resource addresses analysis difficulties related to inconsistent file formats and metadata standards; be easy to use; and include an analysis and high performance computing training component. There are also questions about the cost of sustaining the cloud as well as establishing as means of data access that complies with regulatory requirements while not being too restrictive.

In a decision that is expected to be praised by police and pummeled by some civil rights groups, the US Supreme Court yesterday upheld the power of government, at every level, to collect and keep DNA samples from people who are arrested for serious crimes, ScotusBlog reports.

Anyone who watches network detective shows knows that DNA evidence and matching offers tremendous value to police, particularly in cold cases. Cops want to be able to expand the pool of genetic 'fingerprints' as much as possible, enabling deep searches to link a suspect who was picked up for one act to others in the past.

But the plaintiffs in the case of Maryland v. King argued that taking DNA samples from someone who is merely suspected of a crime and then trying to match them genetically to other, past crimes without a warrant violates the 'unreasonable search and seizure' aspect of the Fourth Amendment.

The decision was a surprising 5-4 split that saw unlikely alliances, as Justice Antonin Scalia joined the liberal wing of the bench in voting against the ruling and Justice Stephen Breyer swung with conservatives in the majority who agreed that the practice is constitutional.

In his dissenting minority opinion, Scalia said that the Fourth Amendment forbids searching people for evidence of a crime when there is no reason to believe they are guilty of that crime or in possession of incriminating evidence.

"That prohibition is categorical and without exception; it lies at the very heart of the Fourth Amendment," Scalia said in summary from the bench.

The majority opinion held that such searches are not unreasonable and they are not much different from fingerprints, mugshot searches, or police lineups.

There are good reasons for the disagreement, because the constitution likely encouraged disagreement over such important issues, Akhil Reed Amar, a Yale law professor, and Neal Katyal, former acting US solicitor general and Georgetown professor, write in an op-ed in today's New York Times.

The side-switching of the justices and the closeness of the vote suggests that this was a difficult question before the Court, one that Justice Samuel Alito called "perhaps the most important criminal procedure case that this Court has heard in decades."

Still, Amar and Katyal say the majority got this one right. The Fourth Amendment leaves a fair amount of leeway in deciding what is and is not "unreasonable," they add.

"Contrary to Justice Scalia's view, the framers [of the Constitution] did not answer the DNA question in 1791. Rather, the framers posed the question for us, their posterity," Amar and Katyal note.