English

Two-timescale evolution on a singular landscape

Populations and Evolution 2015-06-15 v1

Abstract

Under the effect of strong genetic drift, it is highly probable to observe gene fixation or gene loss in a population, shown by infinite peaks on a coherently constructed potential energy landscape. It is then important to ask what such singular peaks imply, with or without the effects of other biological factors. We studied the stochastic escape time from the infinite potential peaks in the Wright-Fisher model, where the typical two-scale diffusion dynamics was observed via computer simulations. We numerically found the average escape time for all the bi-stable cases and analytically approximated the results under weak mutations and selections by calculating the mean first passage time (MFPT) in singular potential peak. Our results showed that Kramers' classical escape formula can be extended to the models with non-Gaussian probability distributions, overcoming constraints in previous methods. The constructed landscape provides a global and coherent description for system's evolutionary dynamics, allowing new biological results to be generated.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1304.4337,
  title  = {Two-timescale evolution on a singular landscape},
  author = {Song Xu and Shuyun Jiao and Pengyao Jiang and Ping Ao},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1304.4337},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1108.1484

R2 v1 2026-06-22T00:00:17.982Z