Related papers: Finite genome size can halt Muller's ratchet
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…
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…
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…
When mutation rates are low, natural selection remains effective, and increasing the mutation rate can give rise to an increase in adaptation rate. When mutation rates are high to begin with, however, increasing the mutation rate may have a…
The adaptation of large asexual populations is hampered by the competition between independently arising beneficial mutations in different individuals, which is known as clonal interference. Fisher and Muller proposed that recombination…
We consider a biological population in which a beneficial mutation is undergoing a selective sweep when a second beneficial mutation arises at a linked locus and we investigate the probability that both mutations will eventually fix in the…
A mutator is an allele that increases the mutation rate throughout the genome by disrupting some aspect of DNA replication or repair. Mutators that increase the mutation rate by the order of 100 fold have been observed to spontaneously…
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,…
Linked beneficial and deleterious mutations are known to decrease the fixation probability of a favorable mutation in large asexual populations. While the hindering effect of strongly deleterious mutations on adaptive evolution has been…
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…
Although mutations drive the evolutionary process, the rates at which the mutations occur are themselves subject to evolutionary forces. Our purpose here is to understand the role of selection and random genetic drift in the evolution of…
In large populations, multiple beneficial mutations may be simultaneously spreading. In asexual populations, these mutations must either arise on the same background or compete against each other. In sexual populations, recombination can…
Most new mutations are deleterious and are eventually eliminated by natural selection. But in an adapting population, the rapid amplification of beneficial mutations can hinder the removal of deleterious variants in nearby regions of the…
Sexually reproducing populations with small number of individuals may go extinct by stochastic fluctuations in sex determination, causing all their members to become male or female in a generation. In this work we calculate the time to…
In genetic drift of small population, it is well known that even when the ratio of alleles is 0.5, specific genes are fixed in or disappear from the population. It seems the reason why inbreeding is avoided. On the other hand, this…
Large populations may contain numerous simultaneously segregating polymorphisms subject to natural selection. Since selection acts on individuals whose fitness depends on many loci, different loci affect each other's dynamics. This leads to…
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…
It has been a puzzling question why some organisms reproduce sexually. Fisher and Muller hypothesized that reproducing by sex can speed up the evolution. They explained that in the sexual reproduction, recombination can combine beneficial…
Maintenance of sexual reproduction and genetic recombination imposes physiological costs when compared to parthenogenic reproduction, most prominently: for maintaining the corresponding (molecular) machinery, for finding a mating partner,…
We consider a single genetic locus with two alleles $A_1$ and $A_2$ in a large haploid population. The locus is subject to selection and two-way, or recurrent, mutation. Assuming the allele frequencies follow a Wright-Fisher diffusion and…