This is the program for the 2010 Joint Statistical Meetings in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Abstract Details

Activity Number: 2
Type: Invited
Date/Time: Sunday, August 1, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
Sponsor: WNAR
Abstract - #306124
Title: Population-Genetic Approaches for Phylogenetic Substitution Models
Author(s): Nicolas Rodrigue*+
Companies: University of Ottawa
Address: Department of Biology, Ottawa, ON, K1N 6N5, Canada
Keywords: mutation-selection ; Dirichlet process ; Markov chain Monte Carlo
Abstract:

Modeling the interplay between mutation and selection at the molecular level is key to modern evolutionary studies. To this end, codon-based evolutionary models have been proposed as pertinent means of studying long-range evolutionary patterns. However, these approaches have not yet consolidated results from studies showing that purifying selection in proteins displays strong site-specific effects, which translate into heterogeneous amino acid propensities across the columns of alignments. In this talk, we integrate recent developments in nonparametric statistical approaches to propose a probabilistic model that accounts for the heterogeneity of amino acid fitness profiles across the coding positions of a gene. We apply the model to a dozen real protein-coding gene alignments and find it to produce biologically plausible inferences.


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