January 1, 2017 (Vol. 37, No. 1)

URL:
http://apple.co/2hdvMcM

Rating:
Strong Points: Comprehensive depiction of taxonomic families, nice graphics
Weak Points: No Wikipedia link, expensive for the amount of actual content

Platform:
iPhone

Cost:
$6.99

Summary:

Though beautiful in its comprehensive artistic renditions of taxonomic families within the tree of life, the Tree of Life – PRO app is not as informative as it is made out to be. As a tool to browse phylogenetic relationships, it is comprehensive and informative in the sense that users can explore increasingly fine phylogenetic relationships among taxonomic families. However, beyond these actual relationships, there is no additional content to be found. In theory, users should be able to access the Wikipedia page for each family; however, in practice I was only met with blank pages when I attempted to access this feature. The “references” page of the app was also conspicuously blank. Thus, only if potential users are primarily interested in exploring dendrograms is there a fair amount of information to browse.

Previous articleSignaling Circuit Offers New Approach Against Therapy-Resistant Prostate Cancer
Next articleTop 10 Molecular Millionaires