Glad to see this out today in MEE! The rarity of mutations and the inflation of bacterial effective population sizes besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #popgen #populationgenetics #evolution #bacteriagenomics #bacteria #microsky #statsstandrews @uniofstandrews.bsky.social - ThreadSky

ruiborges23.bsky.social • 31 days ago

Glad to see this out today in MEE!
The rarity of mutations and the inflation of bacterial effective population sizes
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/2041-210X.14501

#popgen #populationgenetics #evolution #bacteriagenomics #bacteria #microsky #statsstandrews @uniofstandrews.bsky.social

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ruiborges23.bsky.social•31 days ago

1/8 Mutations are fundamental for evolution, and their mathematical modelling in population genetics heavily relies on our perception of their frequency and the timescale over which they occur.

ruiborges23.bsky.social•31 days ago

2/8 A common assumption is that mutations are infrequent, so when a new mutation arises, the previous one has either become fixed or lost. This assumption implies that mutations occur exclusively at fixed sites and is referred to as the boundary mutation model (BM).

ruiborges23.bsky.social•31 days ago

3/8 However, one can alternatively assume a recurrent mutation model (RM), which additionally considers mutations contributing to shifts in allele frequency.
In this study, we compare these two models.

ruiborges23.bsky.social•31 days ago

4/8 By examining mutation rates and effective population sizes across the Tree of Life, we demonstrate that the BM model remains valid for most species but significantly deviates in bacteria.

ruiborges23.bsky.social•31 days ago

5/8 Our analyses further reveal that the BM model tends to overestimate the effective population size, particularly in bacteria, where estimated population sizes can be more than five times larger than those expected by the recurrent mutation model.

ruiborges23.bsky.social•31 days ago

6/8 We address these biases by proposing a Bayesian estimator for population size that accounts for recurrent mutations. You can find them here: https://github.com/mrborges23/mutation_models

planettitanic.bsky.social•29 days ago

darwin was wrong

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