Full Description
Evolution is a stochastic process and given the amount of data generated in biological sciences today, there is a pressing need for people with a quantitative background to understand and contribute towards understanding of evolution leading to better interaction between stakeholders. This book equips engineers and physical scientists to make biologically relevant quantitative representations of evolutionary processes. The concepts of evolution are introduced via semi-quantitative treatment with graphical illustrations and explain how evolution experiments are conducted in a laboratory.
Features:
Discusses background, concepts of evolutionary biology, and experimental evolution.
Helps readers develop a geometric view of evolutionary processes.
Covers both biological and mathematical foundations in equal measure.
Illustrates coding exercises supported by pertinent MATLAB codes for the provided problems.
Includes homework problems and a solutions manual.
This book is aimed at senior undergraduate and graduate students in engineering and physical sciences.
Contents
1. The theory of evolution by natural selection
2. Primer on Central Dogma of Molecular Biology
3. Model organism to study evolution
4. Growth models
5. Type of mutations and selection coefficients
6. Fitness Landscapes
7. Epistasis
8. Drift
9. Clonal interference
10. Distribution of Fitness Effects (DFE)
11. The idea of "Molecular Clock" and Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution
12. How to do evolution experiments in lab?
13. Lessons from evolution experiments: the Long-Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE)
14. Lessons from evolution experiments
15. Empirical Fitness Landscapes
16. What have we not discussed?
