Summer school in molecular evolution and diversity

分子进化和多样性暑期学校

• 批准号: BB/F009003/1
• 负责人: John Brookfield
• 金额: $ 9.62万
• 依托单位: University of Nottingham
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2008
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2008 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=BB%2FF009003%2F1
• 关键词: Summer; molecular; evolution; diversity

The Summer School will be a course for Postgraduate and Postdoctoral researchers working on quantitative aspects of evolutionary biology, dealing with variation both within and between species. The course is intended for young scientists who take an ongoing and broad interest in molecular evolutionary biology, and wish to gain a greater understanding of quantitative and theoretical tools and approaches that will aid their interpretation of evolutionary data. The central aim is to deepen understanding of the evolutionary principles and concepts needed to work with sequences to study biological questions. The underlying philosophy of the course is that young biologists will increasingly need to use quantitative evolutionary approaches in their research, and that they cannot do this effectively without a good understanding of the theoretical foundations. The course will focus on some of the most important results that are widely used in understanding genetic variability within species, evolutionary change between species, natural selection and how it is detected from DNA sequence data, evolution of gene families and changes in gene function in the evolution of developmental systems, genome evolution and evolution of pathogens. The main content of the course is a set of lectures and computer-based practicals from experts in population genetics and molecular evolutionary analyses, including both people working on developing methods, and people who are applying them to biological data from a range of organisms. The lecturers will be asked to spend at least two days at the course. While covering the range of topics listed above, the lectures form an integrated set, with important concepts appearing in multiple contexts (e.g. population subdivision, and neutral evolution, must be understood when testing for the action of natural selection). The course will include a technical lecture on the principles of DNA and protein sequence alignment, but the lecturer on this topic will also be able to show the close relationship between alignment methods and models of sequence evolution. The course includes an introduction to population genetics theory, and concentrates on a few major results that can be simply derived in lectures, and can be explained and understood intuitively. Reading lists with references to more formal theoretical treatments are supplied, so that students can study further aspects that are most relevant to their very different individual interests. It is very important that students learn to think about biological data sets in a quantitative way, which will help them in a variety of approaches to predictive biology. There will also be computer sessions, intended to help participants learn how to approach analyses of sequence and other data, and to understand about how they can be used in studying biological questions of interest. The course includes a lecture on understanding phylogenetic trees, and tree estimation is included in the computer classes, but the course does not cover this in depth. Equally, there is also a lecture on population structure, but this deals with phylogeographic approaches only in this context, i.e. it aims to communicate the underlying population genetic principles needed for a critical understanding of these approaches, but does not offer training in them. Training in both phylogenetic tree estimation and phylogeographic approaches, including technical training in the use of the relevant software packages, are available in other courses, whereas other courses have little population genetics content. In addition to the lectures, the 'students' chosen for the school present a short talk or a poster about their research project (or planned project). This generates discussions with the lecturers, and the students are able to get technical and other advice in discussions with the lecturers.

暑期学校将为研究生和博士后研究人员提供进化生物学定量方面的课程，处理物种内部和物种之间的变化。该课程旨在为年轻的科学家谁采取了持续和广泛的兴趣在分子进化生物学，并希望获得定量和理论工具和方法，这将有助于他们的进化数据的解释更深入的了解。中心目标是加深对进化原理和概念的理解，这些原理和概念是研究生物学问题所需的序列。该课程的基本理念是，年轻的生物学家将越来越需要在他们的研究中使用定量进化方法，如果没有对理论基础的良好理解，他们就无法有效地做到这一点。该课程将侧重于一些最重要的结果，这些结果被广泛用于了解物种内的遗传变异性，物种之间的进化变化，自然选择以及如何从DNA序列数据中检测到，基因家族的进化以及发育系统进化中基因功能的变化，基因组进化和病原体进化。该课程的主要内容是一系列讲座和基于计算机的实践，来自群体遗传学和分子进化分析专家，包括开发方法的人员，以及将其应用于一系列生物体的生物数据的人员。讲师将被要求至少花两天的时间在课程上。虽然涵盖了上述主题的范围，但讲座形成了一个完整的集合，其中重要的概念出现在多种背景下（例如，在测试自然选择的作用时，必须理解人口细分和中性进化）。该课程将包括关于DNA和蛋白质序列比对原理的技术讲座，但关于这个主题的讲师也将能够展示序列进化的比对方法和模型之间的密切关系。本课程包括对群体遗传学理论的介绍，并集中在几个主要的结果，可以简单地在讲座中得出，并可以直观地解释和理解。阅读列表提供了更正式的理论治疗的参考，使学生可以进一步研究与他们非常不同的个人兴趣最相关的方面。学生学会以定量的方式思考生物数据集是非常重要的，这将有助于他们采用各种方法来预测生物学。还将有计算机会议，旨在帮助参与者学习如何处理序列和其他数据的分析，并了解如何将其用于研究感兴趣的生物学问题。本课程包括一个关于理解系统发育树的讲座，树估计包括在计算机课程中，但本课程没有深入介绍。同样，也有一个关于种群结构的讲座，但这只涉及在这种情况下，即它的目的是传达基本的种群遗传学原则需要批判性地理解这些方法，但不提供培训。在其他课程中提供系统发育树估计和生物地理学方法的培训，包括使用相关软件包的技术培训，而其他课程则几乎没有种群遗传学内容。除了讲座之外，被选入学校的“学生”还会就他们的研究项目（或计划中的项目）进行简短的演讲或张贴海报。这就产生了与讲师的讨论，学生能够在与讲师的讨论中获得技术和其他建议。