Introduction to Phylogenomics: from Theory to Practice

6-7 Feb 2024

Dr. Charles Pouchon, UNIGE

Summary: Understanding the relationships between organisms is essential to unravel their evolution and origins. Following Darwin’s works, evolution can be represented in the form of a phylogenetic tree, where each modern species is related to an ancestral form from which they diverged and evolved. According to this principle, the similarity of traits among organisms can be explained by the divergence time among those organisms and their common ancestor, allowing for differences to accumulate. The more similar the species are, the more recent their common ancestor is. The discovery of DNA, the hereditary material of all living organisms, has greatly improved our understanding of the evolution of species through the study of similarities among genetic sequences. For over 10 years now, more and more sequences can be generated and compared thanks to the advent of next generation sequencing (NGS). NGS brings advantages and complexities that pose new challenges that must be addressed to avoid misleading interpretation. This course aims to introduce participants to the theory and bioinformatic tools used to infer phylogenies from multi-locus genomes in the era of NGS (i.e. gene alignments, trimming, phylogenetic inferences under different approaches, multi-coalescent inferences, data visualisation and interpretation, etc)

UNIGE

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