Evolution enters the genomic era.docVIP

/2001/2/11/reports/4026.1 Meeting report Evolution enters the genomic era David A Liberles Address: Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics and Stockholm Bioinformatics Center, Stockholm University, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: liberles@sbc.su.se Published: 12 October 2001 GenomeBiology 2001, 2(11):reports4026.1–4026.5 The electronic version of this article is the complete one and can be found online at /2001/2/11/reports/4026 ? BioMed Central Ltd (Print ISSN 1465-6906; Online ISSN 1465-6914) evolutionary and ecological functional genomics was pre- A report on the 18th Congress of the European Society sented [/~feder/EEFG.html]. for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB), Aarhus, Denmark, 20-25 This forum, bringing together research and researchers in August, 2001. evolution, ecology, functional analysis (for example in vitro biochemistry), and genomics, is intended to promote under- standing of the evolutionary origin and functional signifi- The congress covered all aspects of evolution, from the molecular and the genomic to the morphological, and only a small sample of the talks will be discussed here. As was apparent in many talks, genomics is starting to bring together research on ecological forces, morphological innovations, and other kinds of phenotype, with molecular genotypes. This convergence was approached from two directions: by starting with phenotypic differences and looking for a genetic cause, and by starting with genomic sequence differ- ences between organisms and searching for either functional effects or for the signatures of adaptation. cance of genomic variation in populations of species and was represented by two sessions - one on laboratory evolution and a second on evolution in natural populations. Several talks from the laboratories of David Botstein (Stan- ford University, USA) and R. Frank Rosenzweig (University of Florida, Gainesville