Konrad Lohse

Konrad Lohse abstract

Konrad Lohse, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, UoE

Calculating likelihoods under the coalescent

* joint work with Nick Barton & Martin Chmelik (IST Austria) and Laurent Frantz (Wageningen University)

We now have access to whole genome sequences from many populations and species. However, extracting information about their evolutionary history from these data remains a major challenge. I will describe a method for finding the probability distribution of neutral genealogies, which allows for splitting of populations, migration between them and recombination between linked loci. These processes are described by a set of linear recursions for the Laplace Transform of branch lengths. Under the infinite-sites mutation model, the probability of any configuration of mutations can be found from this. Such calculations are feasible for small numbers of sampled genomes, and can readily be automated. I will give an example application to human data and discuss the limitations of this inference framework in terms of sample size and model complexity.