Overview

During the last ten years, remarkable progress has been made in the study of molecular evolution. Development of new statistical methods and advances in computational technology are among the most important factors responsible for this progress. In particular, phylogenetic analysis of DNA or protein sequences has become a powerful tool for studying molecular evolution. With the development of complex technology, application of the new statistical and computational methods has become more complicated and there is no comprehensive volume that treats these methods in depth. Molecular Evolution and Phylogenetics fills this gap and presents various statistical methods in an easily accessible form to general biologists as well as biochemists, bioinformatists and graduate students. The text covers measurement of sequence divergence, construction of phylogenetic trees, statistical tests for detection of positive Darwinian selection, inference of ancestral amino acid sequences, construction of linearized trees, and analysis of allele frequency data. Emphasis is given to practical methods of data analysis, with numerical examples illustrating the use of these methods throughout the text.

Molecular data for all the numerical examples in this book are presented here chapter-by-chapter. You can download those data files and analyze them using the computer programs indicated. Most of these programs are also available freely; so we have provided internet addresses to obtain them. We hope that these resources will be useful for working through numerical examples in the classroom study and for learning practical aspects of evolutionary analysis for research.

In addition, we have provided information for some figures that instructors may be interested in using in the classroom settings; and the list of typographical or other types of errors in the first printing of the book.

June 2000   336 pp.; 73 line illus.