PECASE: Genetical Theory of Population Subdivision and Divergence

提案题目：PECASE：人口细分和分化的遗传理论机构：哈佛大学这项工作将提高我们使用DNA或其他遗传数据推断人口结构和人口历史的能力。例如，它将使我们能够回答诸如“这些种群之间发生了多少迁移？”或“这些种群何时彼此分化？”为了做到这一点，将扩展用于描述种群内部和种群之间遗传变异模式的数学模型。因此，该项目的第二个影响将是应用数学和概率论领域的进步。此外，还将制作两本书和一个互动网站。这样做的目的是促进大多数工人使用但很少教授的群体遗传学分支的教学，称为凝聚理论。这项工作的理论方面将集中在人口模型的分析上，在这些模型中，不同的事件以截然不同的速度发生。例如，如果迁移率很高，那么迁移事件将比突变事件发生得更频繁，而突变事件往往是非常罕见的。当这种时间尺度上的差异发生时，分析就会更简单，数学模型本身也有一些有趣的特性。这些简化将用于产生一系列的方法和测试，经验种群遗传学家可以用来研究自然种群的历史。这些书将带来人口遗传学的教学，以最新的研究方法和思想。具体地说，他们将使用并提倡现代系谱学，或合并，方法来研究这个问题。该方法考虑了遗传数据样本的家谱历史，因此比传统的种群遗传方法更适合于实证工作，后者对整个种群进行建模。该项目最初是作为职业奖资助的，并于2004年5月转换为工程师和科学家的总统早期职业奖（PECASE）奖。

Proposal Title: PECASE: Genetical Theory of Population Subdivision and DivergenceInstitution: Harvard UniversityThis work will enhance our ability to use DNA or other genetic data to make inferences about population structure and population history. It will allow us, for instance, to answer questions like "How much migration has occurred between these populations?" or "When did these populations diverge from each other?" In order to do this, a body of mathematical models that are used to describe patterns of genetic variation within and between populations will be extended. Thus, a secondary impact of the project will be an advance in the fields applied mathematics and probability theory. Further, two books and an interactive web site will be produced. The aim of these is to promote the teaching of the branch of population genetics used by most workers but rarely taught, called coalescent theory.The theoretical aspects of the work will focus on the analysis of population models in which different events happen at vastly different rates. For example, if migration rates are high, then migration events will happen much more often than mutation events, which tend to be very rare. When such differences in time scale occur, the analyses are simpler and the mathematical models have properties that make them interesting in their own right. These simplifications will be used to produce a battery of methods and tests, which empirical population geneticists can employ to study the history of natural populations. The books will bring the teaching of population genetics up to date with current research methods and ideas. Specifically, they will use and advocate the modern genealogical, or coalescent, approach to the subject. The coalescent approach considers the genealogical history of a sample of genetic data, and thus can be better suited to empirical work than classical population genetic approaches which model entire populations.This project was originally funded as a CAREER award, and was converted to a Presidential Early Career Award for Engineers and Scientists (PECASE) award in May 2004.