9615098 Sogin The Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, MA, continues to support a valuable interdisciplinary series of summer workshops in Molecular Evolution for the years 1997 through 1999. The workshops provide training in molecular phylogenetics and evolutionary biology and promote collaborative efforts among molecular, cellular, and developmental biologists, physiologists, systematists, and theoreticians. Leaders in the fields of Molecular Evolution, Population and Systematic Biology, Developmental Biology, and Computational Biology present a lecture series that is integrated with a computer laboratory. During the first phase of each year's workshop, 60 students will attend a two-week lecture and laboratory session; in the second phase, up to 15 students will participate in a one-week special projects session. Topics covered reflect the expertise of the large staff of lecturers and track pioneering developments in the field, but usually include the theory of origins of life, phylogenetic reconstructions from molecular data, macromolecular sequence alignment techniques, current trends in molecular systematics, evolution of developmental pathways, and comparative genomics. In the computer laboratory, high-speed machines running a variety of operating systems are used to test theoretical concepts described in the lecture series. Guided by authors of phylogenetic analyses and designers of computer packages for gene sequence comparisons, the students explore a wide array of analytical techniques for the study of evolutionary phenomena using molecular data. The opportunity to implement concepts described in the lecture series using diverse "state of the art" hardware frees the students from platform restrictions and is a distinguishing feature of this workshop. The special topics session will allow up to 15 students to work on their individual research data sets under the guidance of leaders in the field of molecular evolution, including the two project directors, Drs. Sogin and Davis on. The course is designed for established investigators, postdoctoral fellows, and graduate students from diverse biological fields, with attention as well to members of the biometrics community and faculty from undergraduate institutions.
