Evolutionsgenetik der Pflanzen und Mikroorganismen

Course material for "Evolutionary genetics of plants and micro-organisms"

Winter semester

Description:

This course will cover fundamental aspects of evolutionary genetics. Namely we will study how populations evolve and the processes involved. Examples will be taken from the plant kingdom and from various species of plant pathogens: Arabidopsis thaliana, wild tomato species (our own studies) and rice for plants, and rusts or mildews for pathogens.
A seminar part will deal with studying the evolutionary processes occurring during domestication of crops (maize, wheat, tomato, barley, rice).
This course will provide bases for understanding statistical tests used in animal, plant and parasite evolutionary genomics.

Content:

1) Molecular Evolution: Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, neutral model of evolution, mutation-drift equilibrium, natural selection, speciation models, molecular clock, sexual reproduction and recombination (Red Queen hypothesis).

2) Population Genetics and application to Genomic analyses in plants and micro-organisms: coalescent models, Muller’s ratchet, Genomic applications of the coalescent: tests of selection, Spatial structure of populations.

3) Population genetics and plant domestication:history of plant domestication, examples of domestication processes, genomic signatures of domestication.

 

Please download the following programs:

DnaSP from http://www.ub.edu/dnasp/