Extracting Evolutionary Insights Using Bioinformatics
1School of Systems Biology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
2Department of Bioengineering and Bioinformatics, Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia
3Limnological Institute of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Irkutsk, Russia
Extracting Evolutionary Insights Using Bioinformatics
Description
In conjunction with theoretical speculations and experimental studies, bioinformatics can provide valuable insights into the patterns of speciation and population divergence and generate predictive paradigms addressing the causes and consequences of the changes in the genomic structures. Computational approaches have been shown to successfully model the natural selection, the gene flow, and the recombination rate and provide plausible explanations for the patterns observed in natural and experimental populations. Last but not least, the completion of reference genome sequences for many important species provided opportunities for improving our understanding of the natural history.
We invite investigators to contribute original research articles as well as review articles that derive evolutionary important conclusions from the comparative sequencing, protein alignment, or computational modeling data. We are particularly interested in manuscripts that describe microevolutionary processes discovered using bioinformatics-based approaches or high-throughput profiling of multiple individuals of the same species or hybrids, including domesticated species and populations under environmental stress or other types of the selective pressure. We will also seriously consider computational techniques-oriented papers that significantly advance the field or provide novel tools of convenience. Potential topics include, but are not limited to:
- Evolution of populations in the stressed environment
- Coevolution of host and parasite species, including bacteria and viruses
- Evolution and biodiversity of domesticated species
- Systems biology approaches to microevolutionary processes
- Evolutionary processes in the test tube and other closed ecosystems
- Extracting insight into the function of protein families using molecular phylogeny
- Protein, DNA, and RNA-based molecular phylogeny as a source for insight into the natural history
- Use of Next-Gen sequencing and reference genomes for understanding the evolution
Please note that we specifically solicit papers that employ existing and develop novel computational tools that allow one to gain understanding of micro- and macroevolutionary processes. We also would welcome articles highlighting creative applications of bioinformatics to the fields of evolution-related research.
Before submission authors should carefully read over the journal's Author Guidelines, which are located at http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijg/guidelines/. Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the journal Manuscript Tracking System at http://mts.hindawi.com/submit/journals/ijg/evol/ according to the following timetable: