Molecular Markers and Population Genetics [GTPB course in Portugal]
Course description: Genetic data are increasingly used by ecologists and evolutionary biologists in general. It has thus become important for many biologists with different levels of experience to produce and analyse genetic data. In this course we shall take a practical approach to the analysis of genetic data, but we will also provide some of the theoretical background required to understand the outputs of the software used. Mornings will usually be devoted to introduce notions that will be applied in the afternoon using freely available software. In particular the following software will be used: ARLEQUIN and GENETIX to analyse classical population genetic data, STRUCTURE and GENECLASS2 to look for hidden structure and assign multilocus genotypes, Bottleneck and msvar to detect and quantify population size changes, IM to estimate gene flow and divergence times, Fdist and/or BayesFst to detect selection. The R statistical package will also be introduced and used to analyse genetic data and outputs of the software, and to simulate simple processes. The software ms that allows to simulate genetic data will also be introduced together with a user-friendly version called Gms.
Course Pre-requisites: Basic Molecular Biology. Population Genetics fundamentals (for example, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium), basic Probability Theory and Statistics (for example, understanding the concept of Conditional Probablility). Previous knowledge in these areas might do, with a refresh. Elementary computing skills.Â
