Content (Syllabus outline)
INTRODUCTION:
the concept of evolution; history of evolutionary biology; philosophical questions of evolution.
EVOLUTIONARY PROCESSES AT THE POPULATION LEVEL:
variability and heredity; a simple population genetic model; action of evolutionary processes and underlying theory (natural selection, mutation, migration, random drift); interactions between processes; evolutionary questions of sex; evolution of quantitative traits; complex models.
EVOLUTION AND BIODIVERSITY:
species and genetics of speciation; genetic population structure; speciation and extinction rates; paleontological data.
MOLECULAR EVOLUTION:
polymorphism at the molecular level; neutral theory of molecular evolution; coalescence, orthology, paralogy; evolutionary and genetic distances; evolution by horizontal transfer; genomic evolution.
PHYLOGENETICS AND MACROEVOLUTION:
phylogenetic trees; use of molecular data for phylogenetic reconstruction; phylogenetic methods; evolution of developmental processes; evolution of form and organismal integration.
COMPUTER LAB:
Simulation of processes; solving of simple population genetic problems; sequence alignment; computation and application of evolutionary distanes and other parameters of DNA and protein sequences; computation and interpretation of phylogenetic trees by various methods.
Prerequisites
Prerequisites for inclusion in the work:
· enrolment in the appropriate academic year