Modern Developments in Theoretical Population Genetics: The Legacy of Gustave Malecot

This book contains chapters by leading population genetics that summarize many of the recent developments in population genetics theory and its application to genetic data. The book was inspired by a meeting in honour of the late French population geneticist, Gustave Malecot, held at the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, France, in the summer of 1999. Malecot was, along with R.A. Fisher, J.B.S. Haldane, and S. Wright, among the founders of theoretical population genetics. The meeting demonstrated both the great interest in Malecot's work and its relevance to the recent development of the theory of coalescents and the application of that theory to genetic variation observed at the level of DNA sequence. The introductory papers in the book review Malecot's life and his contributions to the theory of population genetics. Later chapters present recent developments in population genetics with particular emphasis on the theory of coalescents. They include discussions of methods for inferring past changes in population size and patterns of genetic exchange, for inferring the ages of individual mutations, and for analysing the relationships among closely linked genes.