Related papers: Natural selection on human Y chromosomes
We are interested in modelling Darwinian evolution, resulting from the interplay of phenotypic variation and natural selection through ecological interactions. Our models are rooted in the microscopic, stochastic description of a population…
Genetic data are often used to infer demographic history and changes or detect genes under selection. Inferential methods are commonly based on models making various strong assumptions: demography and population structures are supposed…
Recent advances in high-throughput genomics technologies have resulted in the sequencing of large numbers of (near) complete genomes. These genome sequences are being mined for important functional elements, such as genes. They are also…
To counterbalance the views presented here by Suzana Moss de Oliveira, we explain here the truth: How men are oppressed by Mother Nature, who may have made an error inventing us, and by living women, who could get rid of most of us. Why do…
Studying how diverse human populations are related is of historical and anthropological interest, in addition to providing a realistic null model for testing for signatures of natural selection or disease associations. Furthermore,…
Concomitant with the evolution of biological diversity must have been the evolution of mechanisms that facilitate evolution, due to the essentially infinite complexity of protein sequence space. We describe how evolvability can be an object…
Mendez et al. recently report the identification of a Y chromosome lineage from an African American that is an outgroup to all other known Y haplotypes, and report a time to most recent common ancestor, TMRCA, for human Y lineages that is…
Many mathematical models of evolution assume that all individuals experience the same environment. Here, we study the Moran process in heterogeneous environments. The population is of finite size with two competing types, which are exposed…
Recent microbial experiments suggest that enhanced genetic drift at the frontier of a two-dimensional range expansion can cause genetic sectoring patterns with fractal domain boundaries. Here, we propose and analyze a simple model of…
Evolutionary synthesis models have been used to study the physical properties of unresolved populations in a wide range of scenarios. Unfortunately, their self-consistency are difficult to test and there are some theoretical open questions…
The interaction networks of biological systems are known to take on several non-random structural properties, some of which are believed to positively influence system robustness. Researchers are only starting to understand how these…
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
Genetic algorithms based on natural selection and minimal fluctuations have been applied to model physical and biological systems. Critical exponents have been extracted via computational simulations of nucleation for colossal…
In the past decade, Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) have delivered an increasingly broad view of the genetic basis of human phenotypic variation. One of the major developments from GWAS is polygenic scores, a genetic predictor of an…
The Trojan Y Chromosome Strategy (TYC) is a promising eradication method for biological control of non-native species. The strategy works by manipulating the sex ratio of a population through the introduction of \textit{supermales} that…
We consider the accumulation of beneficial and deleterious mutations in large asexual populations. The rate of adaptation is affected by the total mutation rate, proportion of beneficial mutations and population size $N$. We show that…
With declining sequencing costs a promising and affordable tool is emerging in cancer diagnostics: genomics. By using association studies, genomic variants that predispose patients to specific cancers can be identified, while by using tumor…
The accumulation of beneficial mutations on many competing genetic backgrounds in rapidly adapting populations has a striking impact on evolutionary dynamics. This effect, known as clonal interference, causes erratic fluctuations in the…
Intragenomic recombination (crossover) is a very important evolutionary mechanism. The crossover events are not evenly distributed along the natural chromosomes. Monte Carlo simulations revealed that frequency of recombinations decides…
We consider a branching model in discrete time where each individual has a trait in some general state space. Both the reproduction law and the trait inherited by the offsprings may depend on the trait of the mother and the environment. We…