Japan JSPS Program: Models of Nucleotide Substitution and the Demographic History of Natural Populations

9408071 Wakeley该奖项支持为期12个月的日本科学促进会为加州大学伯克利分校综合生物学系John Wakeley博士在日本三岛市国立遗传研究所人口遗传学系提供的博士后奖学金。韦克利博士将与田岛文雄博士合作开展一项名为“核苷酸替代模型和自然种群人口学史”的研究项目。韦克利博士将在日本从事两个主要领域的研究。第一个涉及对DNA序列进化模式的推断。研究人员将开发一种基于计算机的方法，以量化DNA序列中不同位置之间核苷酸替换率的变化。该方法涉及在与序列相关的系谱上随机放置假设的核苷酸替换。第二个领域涉及开发统计方法，以推断人口的人口历史。韦克利最近得出了来自交换迁徙的两个种群的样本中两个序列对之间核苷酸差异的平均数量的方差，并将这个方差与之前发表的两个种群的结果进行了比较，这两个种群在一段时间内完全隔离，韦克利发现，迁徙时的差异比隔离时的大。因此，他计划开发一种测试来区分这两个生物学上有趣的病例。***

9408071 Wakeley This award supports a 12-month Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship for Dr. John Wakeley, Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, at the Department of Population Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Japan. Dr. Wakeley will work with Dr. Fumio Tajima on a research project entitled "Models of Nucleotide Substitution and the Demographic History of Natural Populations." Dr. Wakeley will pursue two main areas of research in Japan. The first involves inferences about the pattern of DNA sequence evolution. The investigators will develop a computer-based method of quantifying variation in the rate of nucleotide substitution among sites in DNA sequences. The method involves the random placement of hypothetical nucleotide substitutions on a genealogy relating the sequences. The second area involves developing statistical approaches to making inferences about the demographic history of populations. Having recently derived the variance of the average number of nucleotide differences among pairs of sequences in a sample from two populations that exchange migrants, and comparing this variance to previously published results for two populations that have been completely isolated from each other for some length of time, Dr. Wakeley found that the variance is greater under migration than under isolation. Thus, he plans to develop a test to distinguish these two biologically interesting cases. ***