9408071 Wakeley This award supports a 12-month Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship for Dr. John Wakeley, Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, at the Department of Population Genetics, National Institute of Genetics, Mishima, Japan. Dr. Wakeley will work with Dr. Fumio Tajima on a research project entitled "Models of Nucleotide Substitution and the Demographic History of Natural Populations." Dr. Wakeley will pursue two main areas of research in Japan. The first involves inferences about the pattern of DNA sequence evolution. The investigators will develop a computer-based method of quantifying variation in the rate of nucleotide substitution among sites in DNA sequences. The method involves the random placement of hypothetical nucleotide substitutions on a genealogy relating the sequences. The second area involves developing statistical approaches to making inferences about the demographic history of populations. Having recently derived the variance of the average number of nucleotide differences among pairs of sequences in a sample from two populations that exchange migrants, and comparing this variance to previously published results for two populations that have been completely isolated from each other for some length of time, Dr. Wakeley found that the variance is greater under migration than under isolation. Thus, he plans to develop a test to distinguish these two biologically interesting cases. ***
