Related papers: Population genetics of neutral mutations in expone…
The site frequency spectrum (SFS) is a widely used summary statistic of genomic data. Motivated by recent evidence for the role of neutral evolution in cancer, we investigate the SFS of neutral mutations in an exponentially growing…
Major efforts to sequence cancer genomes are now occurring throughout the world. Though the emerging data from these studies are illuminating, their reconciliation with epidemiologic and clinical observations poses a major challenge. In the…
We study a simple model of DNA evolution in a growing population of cells. Each cell contains a nucleotide sequence which randomly mutates at cell division. Cells divide according to a branching process. Following typical parameter values…
We aim to understand the evolution of the genetic composition of cancer cell populations. To achieve this, we consider an individual-based model representing a cell population where cells divide, die and mutate along the edges of a finite…
Stochastic models of sequential mutation acquisition are widely used to quantify cancer and bacterial evolution. Across manifold scenarios, recurrent research questions are: how many cells are there with $n$ alterations, and how long will…
Cancer progression is an example of a rapid adaptive process where evolving new traits is essential for survival and requires a high mutation rate. Precancerous cells acquire a few key mutations that drive rapid population growth and…
The site frequency spectrum (SFS) is a popular summary statistic of genomic data. While the SFS of a constant-sized population undergoing neutral mutations has been extensively studied in population genetics, the rapidly growing amount of…
Cancer progression is an evolutionary process that is driven by mutation and selection in a population of tumor cells. We discuss mathematical models of cancer progression, starting from traditional multistage theory. Each stage is…
The unwelcome evolution of malignancy during cancer progression emerges through a selection process in a complex heterogeneous population structure. In the present work, we investigate evolutionary dynamics in a phenotypically heterogeneous…
We study a general setting of neutral evolution in which the population is of finite, constant size and can have spatial structure. Mutation leads to different genetic types ("traits"), which can be discrete or continuous. Under minimal…
We consider an exponentially growing population of cells undergoing mutations and ask about the effect of reproductive fluctuations (genetic drift) on its long-term evolution. We combine first step analysis with the stochastic dynamics of a…
Research into somatic mutations in cancer cell DNA and their role in tumour growth and progression between successive stages is crucial for improving our understanding of cancer evolution. Mathematical and computer modelling can provide…
The aim of this paper is to discuss the role of robustness and diversity in population dynamics in particular to some properties of the multi-step from healthy tissue to fully malignant tumours. Recent evidence shows that diversity within…
Identifying drivers of complex traits from the noisy signals of genetic variation obtained from high throughput genome sequencing technologies is a central challenge faced by human geneticists today. We hypothesize that the variants…
Cancer progression is driven by a small number of genetic alterations accumulating in a neoplasm. These few driver alterations reside in a cancer genome alongside tens of thousands of other mutations that are widely believed to have no role…
In cancer genomics, it is of great importance to distinguish driver mutations, which contribute to cancer progression, from causally neutral passenger mutations. We propose a random-effect regression approach to estimate the effects of…
Most human tumors result from the accumulation of multiple genetic and epigenetic alterations in a single cell. Mutations that confer a fitness advantage to the cell are known as driver mutations and are causally related to tumorigenesis.…
We consider a stationary continuous model of random size population with non-neutral mutations using a continuous state branching process with non-homogeneous immigration. We assume the type (or mutation) of the immigrants is random given…
Conventional population genetics considers the evolution of a limited number of genotypes corresponding to phenotypes with different fitness. As model phenotypes, in particular RNA secondary structure, have become computationally tractable,…
The goal of cancer genome sequencing projects is to determine the genetic alterations that cause common cancers. Many malignancies arise during the clonal expansion of a benign tumor which motivates the study of recurrent selective sweeps…