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Peter Olofsson: Muller's Ratchet in Populations Doomed to Extinction

Time: Wed 2019-10-30 15.15

Location: Cramér room, room 306, house 6 at Kräftriket,

Participating: Peter Olofsson, Jönköping University

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Abstract

Muller's ratchet is the process by which asexual populations accumulate deleterious mutations in an irreversible manner. Most mathematical models have been of the Wright-Fisher type with fixed population size and relative fitness. In contrast, we use a branching process model with absolute fitness, leading to unavoidable extinction. Individuals are divided into classes depending on how many mutations they have accumulated, and we give results for the rate of the ratchet and the size of the fittest class, noticing some stark differences compared to fixed-population models.