Summer School on Mathematics in Biology in Medicine

September 20-24, 2004

Gil McVean

University of Oxford, UK

Modelling genetic variation

Abstract

The evolutionary forces that have shaped life leave specific footprints in the variation between genomes within a species. We can learn about fundamental processes such as natural selection, mutation and recombination by comparing models of evolution against empiricals patterns of variation. I will consider some of the probabilistic models, such as the coalescent, that we can use to describe variation, and how to use these models to learn about the past by comparing their predictions against nature.