Computational Adventures in Evolutionary Biology

In 1977 Carl Woese and George Fox ushered in the era of evolutionary studies
based on analysis of genetic sequences.  Although they did their first analyses
on just a few sequences by hand, they fundamentally restructured the tree of
life, and showed that analysis of patterns in genetic sequences of present day
organisms could illuminate evolutionary history of the ancestors of present-day
organisms.  In this talk I will use work from our lab to illustrate how
computational analysis of sequences reveals multiple dimensions of molecular
evolution in addition to descent combined with variation.  I will further
discuss how using computers to understand molecular evolution can contribute to
understanding major biological and biomedical problems including:
   1) The molecular bases of behavior, including social behavior,
   2) The molecular bases of intelligence, and
   3) Unusual patterns of commonality among organisms only distantly related to each other,
   4) How to develop new modes of therapy against bacterial disease and cancer
      that will have minimal side effects and can overcome acquired resistance
      to therapy on the part of destructive cells.
Finally I will discuss new challenges and opportunities in computational
science posed by the continuing explosive growth in genetic sequence data and
computational power.

Eric Jakobsson is Director, National Center for Biomimetic Nanoconductors, Senior 
Research Scientist, National Center for Supercomputing Applications.  He is Emeritus
Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular and Integrative Physiology, Biophysics and 
Computational Biology, Bioengineering, and Neuroscience in the Beckman Institute
for Advanced Science and Technology in the School of Molecular and Cellular Biology
of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.