| Topic |
Sub-topic |
| 1.- GENERAL INTRODUCTION. |
Genetic variation and its quantification. Genotype and phenotype. Evolutionary units: domains, supradomains and multiprotein factories. Adaptations, exaptations and spandrels. |
| 2.- QUANTITATIVE GENETICS. |
Continuous, discontinuous and threshold characters. Breeding value and genotypic value of a genotype. Environmental value. Environmental sensitivity of a genotype. Components of phenotypic variance. Heritability. Estimation of the minimum number of loci underlying a quantitative trait (QTL). Mapping of QTLs. |
| 3.- CONSEQUENCES OF REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEMS AND TYPES OF MATING ON THE ORGANIZATION OF GENETIC VARIATION. |
Maintenance of genetic variation in populations with sexual reproduction and random mating: Hardy-Weinberg law (H-W); deviations from H-W expectations. Effects of asexual reproduction and non-random mating on genotype frequencies: parthenogenesis; self-fertilization; inbreeding and relatedness coefficients; regular systems of inbreeding; phenotypic assortative mating. |
| 4.- RANDOM DRIFT OF GENE FREQUENCIES IN SMALL POPULATIONS. |
Sampling of gametes and random walk of gene frequencies. Wright-Fisher model. Dispersion of gene frequencies among subpopulations. Rate of fixation within subpopulations and genomes. Effective population size. Founder effects and population bottlenecks. Wahlund's effect.
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| 5.- MUTATION AND GENE FLOW. |
Classes of mutations: nucleotide substitutions; insertions and deletions; duplications; chromosome rearrangements. Mutation rates. Change in gene frequency due to mutation. The fate of a single mutant. Models of mutation in molecular population genetics. Migration and gene flow. Change in gene frequency due to migration; the island model. Mutation and migration in finite populations. |
| 6.- EFFECTS OF NATURAL SELECTION ON GENE FREQUENCIES AND PHENOTYPES. |
Natural selection. Biological fitness. Types of selection. Haploid and diploid basic models of selection. Hard vs soft selection. Balanced polymorphisms kept by constant selection coefficients. Selection on quantitative traits. Correlated response to selection.
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| 7.- GAMETIC DISEQUILIBRIUM AND RECOMBINATION. |
Linkage groups. Quantifying linkage disequilibrium. Randomization effect of recombination. Factors that influence disequilibrium. Evolutionary advantages of recombination. Interactions between non-allelic genes in the determination of fitness. Genetic coadaptation. Horizontal transmission. Promiscuous proteins. Gene duplications. Recruitment. Modular evolution. |
| 8.- EQUILIBRIUM BETWEEN SELECTION AND OTHER FORCES THAT CHANGE GENE FREQUENCIES. |
Mutation-selection balance. The distribution of fitness effects of new mutations. Mutation load: Haldane-Muller principle. Hill-Robertson effect. Muller's ratchet. The degeneration of Y chromosomes. Segregation load. Equilibrium between selection and gene flow. |
| 9.- MEASURING FITNESS IN CONTEMPORARY POPULATIONS. |
Fitness components. Changes in gene frequencies over several generations. Changes in gene frequencies within the life cycle. Differences in the distribution of genetic variation before and after the action of selection. Chromosome extraction techniques. Frequent errors and spurious results in the estimation of fitness. Major difficulty faced by attempts to estimate fitness differences among genotypes in natural populations. |
| 10.- VARIATION IN SELECTION COEFFICIENTS. |
Evolutionary constraints. Environmental mosaicism. Spatial and/or temporal variation in fitness. Selection, gene flow and clines. Frequency-dependent selection. Antagonistic pleiotropy. Genetic conflicts. Sexual selection. Cooperation, altruism and kin-selection: inclusive fitness. |
| 12.- MOLECULAR FOOTPRINTS OF NATURAL SELECTION AND STATISTICAL METHODS FOR TESTING THE NEUTRAL HYPOTHESIS. |
Models of DNA evolution. Limits of nucleotide divergence. Estimates of the number of nucleotide substitutions. Substitution rates. Pseudogenes. Direct effects of selection on nucleotide polymorphism and divergence. The importance of recombination: selective sweep and background selection. Estimators of the population mutation parameter. Statistical tests. |
| 13.- MOLECULAR PHYLOGENIES. |
Cladograms and phylograms. Coalescence theory. Monophyletic, paraphyletic and polyphyletic taxa. Gene trees and species trees. Methods of molecular phylogenetics. The human evolutionary tree.
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TEMA 13.- FILOXENIAS MOLECULARES.
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Cladogramas e filogramas. Teoría da coalescencia. Relacións monofiléticas, parafiléticas e polifiléticas. Árbores de xenes e árbores de especies. Métodos de filoxenética molecular. A árbore evolutiva da especie humana. |
| 14.- ORIGINS OF SPECIES. |
Concepts of species. Why are there so many species? Modes of speciation. Speciation and structure of fitness topographies. Evolution of genetic incompatibilities of hybrids. Rules of speciation. Punctuated equilibria: an alternative to phyletic gradualism |
| 15.- MACROEVOLUTION |
The history of biodiversity. Rates of species origination and extinction. Biogeography. The species concept in paleontology. Using phylogeny to reconstruct the deep past. Adaptive radiations. The origin of animal body plans: Ediacaran biota. Mass extinctions. Human-driven extinctions (the "Sixth Mass Extinction"). |
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