Evolutionary biology is the study of the origin and descent of species, as well as their change over time. Informatics has assisted evolutionary biologists in several key ways; it has enabled researchers to:
trace the evolution of a large number of organisms by measuring changes in their DNA, rather than through physical taxonomy or physiological observations alone,
more recently, compare entire genomes, which permits the study of more complex evolutionary events, such as gene duplication, lateral gene transfer, and the prediction of factors important in bacterial speciation,
build complex computational models of populations to predict the outcome of the system over time
track and share information on an increasingly large number of species and organisms
Future work endeavours to reconstruct the now more complex tree of life.
The area of research within computer science that uses genetic algorithms is sometimes confused with computational evolutionary biology, but the two areas are unrelated.
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