Statements in which the resource exists as a subject.
PredicateObject
rdf:type
lifeskim:mentions
pubmed:issue
4
pubmed:dateCreated
2008-10-22
pubmed:abstractText
The nearly neutral theory attributes most nucleotide substitution and polymorphism to genetic drift acting on weakly selected mutants, and assumes that the selection coefficients for these mutants are drawn from a continuous distribution. This means that parameter estimation can require numerical integration, and this can be computationally costly and inaccurate. Furthermore, the leading parameter dependencies of important quantities can be unclear, making results difficult to understand. For some commonly used distributions of mutant effects, we show how these problems can be avoided by writing equations in terms of special functions. Series expansion then allows for their rapid calculation and, also, illuminates leading parameter dependencies. For example, we show that if mutants are gamma distributed, the neutrality index is largely independent of the effective population size. However, we also show that such results are not robust to misspecification of the functional form of distribution. Some implications of these findings are then discussed.
pubmed:language
eng
pubmed:journal
pubmed:citationSubset
IM
pubmed:status
MEDLINE
pubmed:month
Oct
pubmed:issn
0022-2844
pubmed:author
pubmed:issnType
Print
pubmed:volume
67
pubmed:owner
NLM
pubmed:authorsComplete
Y
pubmed:pagination
418-26
pubmed:dateRevised
2009-11-19
pubmed:meshHeading
pubmed:year
2008
pubmed:articleTitle
Divergence and polymorphism under the nearly neutral theory of molecular evolution.
pubmed:affiliation
Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, University of Edinburgh, West Mains Road, Edinburgh, EH9 3JT, UK. J.J.Welch@ed.ac.uk
pubmed:publicationType
Journal Article