Evolution of Genomes and Origin of Species

Organizers: Daniel Janies, Baltazar Aguda, Jeffrey Parvin, and Avner Friedman

Charles Darwin's book On the Origin of Species, first published in 1859, put forth the theory that organisms evolve over many generations through the process of natural selection. One hundred and fifty years hence, we have determined the chemical basis of inheritance in the structure of DNA, we have sequenced the genomes of thousands of organisms, including our own, and have made good progress in unraveling the molecular mechanisms of many of life's basic processes; and we are finding that Darwinian concepts apply to the evolution of cellular and biomolecular systems. This symposium brings together some of the leading researchers in evolutionary dynamics and mathematical modeling to talk about the evolution itself of Darwin's theory, and its applications to diverse systems such as cancer and infectious diseases.

Accepted Speakers:

Gonzalo Giribet (Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University)
Joan Herbers (College of Biological Sciences, The Ohio State University)
Hopi Hoekstra (Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University)
Daniel Janies (Biomedical Informatics, The Ohio State University)
Wolfgang Sadee (The Ohio State University Medical Center)
Peter Schuster (Institut fuer Theoretische Chemie, Universitaet Wien)