Evolution Basics: Genomes as Ancient Texts, Part 1  Bookmark and
Share  June 13, 2013 Tags: Genetics   Evolution Basics: Genomes
as Ancient Texts, Part 1  Note: This series of posts is intended
as a basic introduction to the science of evolution for non-
specialists. You can see the introduction to this series here.
In this post we compare genomes to manuscripts, and predict
genome patterns that would be expected if speciation events
produced related species groups over time.  You will recall from
the last few posts in this series that speciation begins when a
barrier to allele flow arises that separates what was once a
freely-interbreeding population into two populations. Once the
two populations cannot exchange alleles, (or do so only at a
reduced rate) differences accumulate in the two populations that
are not averaged between them. Additionally, we have seen how
the founder effect can give this process a head start, since it
can lead to differences right at the point of separation. Once
two populations hav