GENETIC AND EVOLUTION
Academic year and teacher
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- Versione italiana
- Academic year
- 2022/2023
- Teacher
- SILVIA GHIROTTO
- Credits
- 6
- Didactic period
- Secondo Semestre
- SSD
- BIO/18
Training objectives
- The purpose of this course is to describe the dynamics of evolution, the driving forces behind the evolutionary process, and the effects of the various molecular mechanisms on the long-term evolution of genomes, genes and their products. Part of the course will involve the discussion of both classical and recent papers and hand-on analysis of case studies.
KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
The student:
- knows the proper evolutionary biology terminology;
- knows the molecular-evolutionary mechanisms;
- knows the models and the mechanisms of the biological evolution
ABILITY TO APPLY KNOWLEDGE AND UNDERSTANDING
The student is able to:
- use the proper evolutionary biology terminology;
- read and understand evolutionary scientific papers;
- apply the knowledge in evolutionary biology to any biological discipline. Prerequisites
- No formal propedeuticity is required.Knowledge of genetics.
Course programme
- This course will deal with the following topics:
Introduction. What is evolution, its mechanisms and applications. (2h)
History of Evolutionary theories. History of evolutionary biology. Evolutionary thoughts before Darwin. Lamarckian theory of evolution, and the inheritance of acquired characters. Brief Brief biography of Charles Darwing and the trip of the Beagle. Malthus' influence on Darwin, and the developement of his evolutionary theory. Natural selection as a matter of the reproductive success. Modern synthesis of evolution. Evidence of darwinian evolution from different fields. (4h)
The Evolutionary model. The Darwinian model of evolution, based on random variation and natural selection. Mendelian inheritance. Stocastic and probabilistic models. Fitness and adaptation. Sexual selection. (6h)
The origin and evolution of genetic variation. Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and its assumptions. Violations of any of the five major assumptions, with particular focus to:
(i)Natural Selection. Fitness and adaptation. Selection coefficient and estimation of allele frequencies after a generation of natural selection for different dominance models (complete dominance, codominance and overdominance)
(ii)Genetic Drift: Stochastic nature of evolution and genetics. Change in the frequency of an allele in a population due to random sampling. Concept of effective population size. (10h)
Demographic models and coalescent theory in population genetics (6h)
Molecular Evolution. How molecular data help the study of evolution. (6h)
Genome evolution. Genome's architecture and differences between species. Structure and function of genes, gene expression and epigenetic modifications. Origin, evolution and phenotypic impact of new genes. Gene duplication, horizontal gene transfer and gene fusion. Duplication of entire genomes (2R and 3R hypotheses). (8h)
Molecular phylogenetics. Relationships between species: from systematics to molecular genetics. Genetic data to study the molecular phylogenetics. Common ancestor and homologous sequences. Difference between paralogous and orthologous sequences. Phylogenetic tree reconstruction: methods based on genetic distance, maximum parsimony methods and methods of maximum likelihood. (6h) Didactic methods
- The course is structured in 48 hours of theoretical lessons (6CFU). The teacher will use slides and hand-outs of the lessons that will make available to students.
Learning assessment procedures
- The learning test consists in a written exam. This exam is composed by 10 T/F questions (1 points/question, 10 points in total), 5 multiple choice (2 point/question, 10 points in total), 2 open questions (6 point/question, 12 points in total). The students will pass the exam with a score not lower than 18 points.
Reference texts
- Slides and hand-outs of the lessons.
Evoluzione, modelli e processi a cura di Marco Ferraguti e Carla Castellacci, PEARSON
Some chapters from the following book:
L'evoluzione di Douglas J Futuyma, Zanichelli
