Recombination in local and global bacterial populations

Recombination is a critical process in bacterial evolutionary dynamics, shaping bacterial genomes and lineage structures and having profound implications for the ability of bacteria to adapt and survive. This talk examines the impact of recombination on bacterial lineage structures across species and populations. By analytically calculating the statistics of correlated substitutions under different models of bacterial recombination, we measure key population genetic parameters directly from large scale sequencing data in a computationally efficient manner. Our measurements of recombination rate variation between lineages in different populations allow us to quantify the evolutionary determinants of population diversity in different species.