Training

The course will provide training for bench-based biologists to use molecular data to construct and interpret phylogenies, and test their hypotheses. Delegates will gain hands-on practice of using a variety of programs freely available online and commonly used in molecular studies, interspersed with some lectures.

Audience

This course is aimed at bench-based biologists with limited or no knowledge of the field of molecular evolution and with some experience of examining DNA/protein sequence data.

Syllabus, Tools and Resources

During this course you will learn about…

• Features of phylogenies (trees) and clade support
• Data interpretation
• Methods of phylogenetic reconstruction: distance-based, maximum likelihood
• Hypothesis testing and tree support: model comparison including testing for positive selection, non-parametric bootstrap

What will I learn?

After this course you should be able to…

• Interpret analyses in their biological context
• Use some freely available software to conduct phylogenetic analyses
• Use appropriate statistics to test hypotheses and draw conclusions
• Discuss some advantages and limitations of alternative molecular analyses