The application of molecular and genetic tools to evolutionary questions provides answers to some of the most fundamental questions in biology.
For example, phylogenetic and phylogeographic analyses illuminate the evolutionary history of life, population genetics provides insight into current processes of gene flow and natural selection, and studies that incorporate experimental evolution and functional genetics can give us a preview of future evolutionary trajectories.
The utility and power of modern genetic techniques can be applied to a diverse array of academic disciplines, including studies of aging, behavior, infectious disease, cancer, genomic evolution and the domestication of plants and animals.
Evolutionary Genetics at UC Irvine
The Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences at UC Irvine has attracted a preeminent group of evolutionary genetics researchers. The Evolutionary Genetics faculty at UC Irvine is dynamic, growing, and includes more members of the National Academy of Sciences in evolutionary biology than any other institution.
There are strong linkages between the evolutionary genetics group within the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and evolutionary geneticists throughout the UC Irvine campus, including other departments in the Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences, the School of Medicine, and the bioinformatics program in the School of Information and Computer Sciences.
The resources available to evolutionary geneticists at UC Irvine include the UC Irvine Protein Expression Facility, the DNA Core Facility, the UC Irvine Gas Chromatography/Mass Spectroscopy facility and the shared molecular facility in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.