Evolutionary Dynamics

Evolutionary dynamics is concerned with the mathematical principles according to which life has evolved. The goal of this course is to understand and to appreciate mathematical models and computational methods that provide insight into the evolutionary process. Emphasis is on asexual populations under selective pressure. Viruses and cancer cells provide the most prominent examples of such systems and they are at the same time of great biomedical interest. The course will cover some classical mathematical population genetics and also introduce several new approaches. This is reflected in a diverse set of mathematical concepts which make their appearance throughout the course, all of which are introduced from scratch. Topics covered include the quasispecies equation, evolution of HIV, evolutionary game theory, birth-death processes, evolutionary stability, evolutionary graph theory, somatic evolution of cancer, stochastic tunneling, cell differentiation, hematopoietic tumor stem cells, genetic progression of colon cancer, traveling mutation waves, diffusion theory, fitness landscapes, genotype-phenotype maps, neutral networks, branching processes, evolutionary escape, partially ordered sets and order ideals, epistasis, triangulations of polytopes, and discrete Fourier transform.

Course Details

Number and title: 262-0001-00L Evolutionary Dynamics

All lectures will be given in English and are accompanied by a 1h tutorial. For each tutorial, there will be assignments that need to be handed in on Mondays 12pm (noon). This can be done either electronically to teaching.cbg(at)bsse.ethz.ch, or as a hardcopy to Beatrice Gander, Institute for Computational Science, CAB F 64.3. During the winter exam session there will be a 15 Min oral exam for each student. The final grade will be 50% assignments and 50% exam.

Schedule