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Biological Networks & Evolution

BIO390 UZH HS26 - Introduction to Bioinformatics
08:00-09:45 @ UZH Irchel Y03-G-85

Anuradha Mukherjee

Evolutionary Bioinformatics of Regulatory Sequences Regulatory DNA sequence can evolve through many possible mutational changes, but only a small fraction of this sequence space can usually be explored experimentally. In this lecture, we will introduce computational concepts for studying how variation in regulatory sequences can influence molecular phenotype and fitness. We will discuss genotype-phenotype and genotype-fitness maps, mutational neighbourhoods, fitness landscapes, epistasis, evolutionary accessibility and the dependence of fitness effects on environmental context.

Simple simulated regulatory sequences examples will be used to illustrate how sequence space can be represented and analysed, and how these representations can help us reason about possible evolutionary trajectories.

After this lecture, students should be able to:

  • Explain the concepts of sequence space, genotype-phenotype maps and fitness landscapes
  • Identify mutational neighbours and calculate distances between sequences
  • Distinguish local from global fitness optima and identify evolutionary paths in landscapes
  • Explain how epistasis affects the relationship between genotype and fitness
  • Explain why some mutations can have different fitness effects in different environments
  • Describe how computational representations of sequence and fitness can be used to study regulatory-sequence evolution