Summary: Evolution can deepen our understanding of biological processes by revealing how things come to be the way we currently observe them. Useful evolutionary tool are those based on phylogenetic trees: they aim at understanding how genes evolved in different species and can provide important clues for understanding the molecular bases of organism biology.
Description: This introductory course will provide the theoretical and practical bases of some tree-based methods using human and Drosophila as main model organisms. The course is divided in three lessons:
1. Introduction to molecular phylogenetics from sequence alignment to Bayesian inference with a particular emphasis on gene phylogenies (4 hours);
2. A focus on phylogenomics, the study of how genes evolve in different genomes, with particular emphasis in detecting gene family expansion/contraction and selection in the species of interest (4 hours);
3. A journal club where students present and discuss with the others a paper chosen form the literature (4 hours).
Skills acquired: practical tools for studying gene evolution using phylogenetics and phylogenomics; skills in presenting and discussing scientific articles on evolutionary biology.
See also: https://www.unitn.it/drbs/38/teaching-program
CIBIO Manifesto of Studies 2017-2018 (which will be repeated in 2019-2020)
Course schedule
Period |
Hours |
Location (place and Room) |
27 April 2020 | 9.00 - 13.00 | ATTENTION: classes will be held online! Please, contact the lecturers for details |
28 April 2020 | 15.00 - 18.00 | ATTENTION: classes will be held online! Please, contact the lecturers for details |
30 April 2020 | 15.00 - 18.00 | ATTENTION: classes will be held online! Please, contact the lecturers for details |
Registration procedure: in order to register to the course, please write to (Secretariat for CIBIO PhD Program) and to phd.aes@unitn.it (Secretariat for AES PhD Program)
Evaluation procedure: Presentation