The impact of purifying and background selection on the inference of population history: problems and prospects.

ABSTRACT: Current procedures for inferring population history generally assume complete neutrality - that is, they neglect both direct selection and the effects of selection on linked sites. We here examine how the presence of direct purifying selection and background selection may bias demographic inference by evaluating two commonly-used methods (MSMC and fastsimcoal2 ), specifically studying how the underlying shape of the distribution of fitness effects (DFE) and the fraction of directly selected sites interact with demographic parameter estimation. The results show that, even after masking functional genomic regions, background selection may cause the mis-inference of population growth under models of both constant population size and decline. This effect is amplified as the strength of purifyi

SUBMITTER: Johri P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7836109 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature