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

Registration procedure: in order to register to the course, please write to phd.bioscie@unitn.it (Secretariat for CIBIO PhD Program) and to phd.aes@unitn.it (Secretariat for AES PhD Program)

Evaluation procedure: Presentation