Progress in Population Genetics and Human Evolution

This book is devoted to the collection, interpretation and analysis of population genetic data. Among the topics included here are studies on human evolutionary history, molecular techniques for generating data, statistical and computational techniques for the interpretation of such data, and stochastic models for genealogy and population structure. The chapters reflect the close interaction between experimental molecular biologists and theoreticians. The book will be useful for specialists in the area, as well as mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists and biologists wanting a brief overview of current problems in the field.

Autorentext
Simon Tavare holds the George and Louise Kawamoto Chair in Biological Sciences and is a Professor of Biological Sciences, Mathematics, and Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California. Professor Tavare's research lies at the interface between statistics and biology, specifically focusing on problems arising in molecular biology, human genetics, population genetics, molecular evolution, and bioinformatics. His statistical interests focus on stochastic computation. Among the applications are linkage disequilibrium mapping, stem cell evolution, and inference in the fossil record. Dr. Tavare is also a professor in the Department of Oncology at the University of Cambridge, England, where his group concentrates on cancer genomics.

Inhalt
I: Early human evolution.- Recent African origin of human mitochondrial DNA: Review of the evidence and current status of the hypothesis.- Lines of descent from mitochondrial Eve: An evolutionary look at coalescence.- Phylogeography of human mtDNA: An Amerindian perspective.- Population structure and modern human origins.- Distribution of pairwise differences in growing populations.- Branching and inference in population genetics.- Human demography and the time since mitochondrial Eve.- II: Molecular techniques and data analysis.- Molecular population genetics of a phenotypically monomorphic protein in Drosophila.- Estimation of the amount of DNA polymorphism and statistical tests of the neutral mutation hypothesis based on DNA polymorphism.- Computational methods for the coalescent.- Applications of Metropolis-Hastings genealogy sampling.- Estimating selection and mutation rates from a random field model for polymorphic sites.- The use of linkage disequilibrium for estimating the recombination fraction between a marker and a disease gene.- Theory and applications of RAPD-PCR: Mispriming.- III: Genealogy and population models.- The structured coalescent.- An ancestral recombination graph.- The effect of purifying selection on genealogies.- Hierarchical and mean-field stepping stone models.- A note on the stepping stone model with extinction and recolonization.- On the normal-selection model.- Branching processes and evolution.