Related papers: Muller's ratchet clicks in finite time
The evolutionary force of recombination is lacking in asexually reproducing populations. As a consequence, the population can suffer an irreversible accumulation of deleterious mutations, a phenomenon known as Muller's ratchet. We formulate…
We study the accumulation of deleterious mutations in a haploid, asexually reproducing population, using analytical models and computer simulations. We find that Muller's ratchet can come to a halt in small populations as a consequence of a…
Muller's ratchet is a paradigmatic model for the accumulation of deleterious mutations in a population of finite size. A click of the ratchet occurs when all individuals with the least number of deleterious mutations are lost irreversibly…
The vast majority of mutations are deleterious, and are eliminated by purifying selection. Yet in finite asexual populations, purifying selection cannot completely prevent the accumulation of deleterious mutations due to Muller's ratchet:…
Muller's ratchet describes the irreversible accumulation of deleterious mutations in asexual populations. In well-mixed populations the speed of fitness decline is exponentially small in the population size, and any positive rate of…
Muller's ratchet, in its prototype version, models a haploid, asexual population whose size~$N$ is constant over the generations. Slightly deleterious mutations are acquired along the lineages at a constant rate, and individuals carrying…
Muller's ratchet, in its prototype version, models a haploid, asexual population whose size~$N$ is constant over the generations. Slightly deleterious mutations are acquired along the lineages at a constant rate, and individuals carrying…
We prove the existence and uniqueness of a quasi-stationary distribution for three stochastic processes derived from the model of Muller's ratchet. This model was invented with the aim of evaluating the limitations of an asexual…
We consider an infinite-dimensional system of stochastic differential equations describing the evolution of type frequencies in a large population. The type of an individual is the number of deleterious mutations it carries, where fitness…
The accumulation of deleterious mutations is driven by rare fluctuations which lead to the loss of all mutation free individuals, a process known as Muller's ratchet. Even though Muller's ratchet is a paradigmatic process in population…
Background: The accumulation of deleterious mutations of a population directly contributes to the fate as to how long the population would exist, a process often described as Muller's ratchet with the absorbing phenomenon. The key to…
The spatial Muller's ratchet is a model introduced by Foutel-Rodier and Etheridge to study the impact of cooperation and competition on the fitness of an expanding asexual population. The model is an interacting particle system consisting…
Consider a population of $N$ individuals, each of them carrying a type in $\mathbb N_0$. The population evolves according to a Moran dynamics with selection and mutation, where an individual of type $k$ has the same selective advantage over…
Background: The accumulation of deleterious mutations of a population directly contributes to the fate as to how long the population would exist. Muller's ratchet provides a quantitative framework to study the effect of accumulation.…
Fontanari et al introduced [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 218101 (2003)] a model for studying the Muller's ratchet phenomenon in growing asexual populations. They studied two situations, either including or not a death probability for each newborn,…
In this article, we consider a generalisation of the spatial Muller's ratchet introduced by Foutel-Rodier and Etheridge. This particle system is a spatial model of an asexual population, with birth and death rates that depend on the local…
We consider the dynamics of a non-recombining haploid population of finite size which accumulates deleterious mutations irreversibly. This ratchet like process occurs at a finite speed in the absence of epistasis, but it has been suggested…
We use traveling-wave theory to derive expressions for the rate of accumulation of deleterious mutations under Muller's ratchet and the speed of adaptation under positive selection in asexual populations. Traveling-wave theory is a…
The prevalence of sexual reproduction ("sex") in eukaryotes is an enigma of evolutionary biology. Sex increases genetic variation only tells its long-term superiority in essence. The accumulation of harmful mutations causes an immediate and…
We consider a model of asexually reproducing individuals with random mutations and selection. The rate of mutations is proportional to the population size, $N$. The mutations may be either beneficial or deleterious. In a paper by Yu,…