Darwin founded evolutionary biology on the ideas that
all species are related to one another through a history of
common descent and that the the exquisite match between a species and its
environment is explained by natural selection, a process in which
individuals with beneficial mutations leave more offspring.
Evolutionary biologists are now confronted by a wealth of genetic data
in the form of whole genome sequences sampled from multiple species
and multiple individuals within a species, gene expression data which
is often known for multiple species, environmental DNA sequences, and information
on genetic variation in a species in the form of single nucleotide
polymorphisms (SNPs). Analysis of this flood of data represents a major
challenge to the field.
Research at the Center for Theoretical Evolutionary Genomics focuses on the analysis of genomic data. We develop phylogenetic and population genetic theory that are appropriate for the analysis of genomic data.
Updated August 14, 2008