Molecular evolution / Wen-Hsiung Li

Includes bibliographical references (pages 437-474) and index

Molecular evolution: a brief history of the pre-DNA era -- Gene structure, genetic codes, and mutation -- Dynamics of genes in populations -- Evolutionary change in nucleotide sequences -- Estimating the number of nucleotide substitutions between sequences -- Molecular phylogenetics: methods, examples -- Rates and patterns of nucleotide substitution -- Molecular clocks -- DNA polymorphism in populations -- Evolution by gene duplication and domain shuffling -- Concerted evolution of multigene families -- Evolution by transposition and horizontal transfer -- Genome organization and evolution -- Roles of mutation and selection in molecular evolution

This book represents the author's effort to provide a synthesis of the exciting developments in molecular evolution in the past two decades. It describes the dynamics of evolutionary change at the molecular level, the driving forces behind the evolutionary process, novel evolutionary phenomena revealed by molecular data, the effects of various molecular mechanisms on the structure of genes and genomes, and the methodology involved in the statistical analysis of molecular data from an evolutionary perspective