BIOL311 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: European Bioinformatics Institute, Phoebus Levene, Ten Lost Tribes
Document Summary
Because dna collects mutations over time, which are then inherited, it contains historical information, and, by comparing dna sequences, geneticists can infer the evolutionary history of organisms, their phylogeny. This field of phylogenetics is a powerful tool in evolutionary biology. If dna sequences within a species are compared, population geneticists can learn the history of particular populations. This can be used in studies ranging from ecological genetics to anthropology; for example, dna evidence is being used to try to identify the ten. Dna has also been used to look at modern family relationships, such as establishing family relationships between the descendants of sally hemings and thomas jefferson. This usage is closely related to the use of dna in criminal investigations detailed above. Indeed, some criminal investigations have been solved when dna from crime scenes has matched relatives of the guilty individual. In a paper published in nature in january, 2013, scientists from the european bioinformatics.
