Evolution can be described as the change of allele frequencies over time. Four forces - mutation, migration, genetic drift, and selection, drive this change. The aim of my thesis was to accurately estimate and differentiate the parameters governing each of ...
Uncontrolled transposable element (TE) insertions and excisions can cause chromosome breaks and mutations with dramatic deleterious effects. The PIWI interacting RNA (piRNA) pathway functions as an adaptive TE silencing system during germline development. ...
The role of adaptation in molecular evolution has been contentious for decades. Here, we shed light on the adaptive potential in Saccharomyces cerevisiae by presenting systematic fitness measurements for all possible point mutations in a region of Hsp90 un ...
Characterizing the role of effective population size in dictating the rate of adaptive evolution remains a major challenge in evolutionary biology. Depending on the underlying distribution of fitness effects of new mutations, populations of different sizes ...