Wednesday, 28 December 2016

evolution - Why is the probability of fixation of an allele equal to its frequency?


Introduction



In a panmictic population, the probability of fixation of an allele at a neutral locus is equal to its frequency at that time. I will refer to this probability of fixation as calculated at time t as Pfix,t.


If pt is the frequency of the allele A1 at time t, then the probability of the allele A1 to reach fixation (rather than disappearing) is Pfix,t=pt. Typically, the generation when the mutation occurred, the probability of the new allele to get fixed is Pfix,0=p0=12N, where N is the population size.


Question


This simple and classic result makes very good intuitive sense to me. However, I would fail to provide a mathematical proof.


Can you please demonstrate that Pfix,t=pt?



Answer



Several proofs are given here (p. 9). My favorite comes from the genealogical argument:


Consider the situation where there are 2N alleles: A1, A2, A3 ... A2N.


By the genealogical argument, we may state that at t=, all alleles at this locus will be direct descendants of one particular allele present at t=0.


Allelic variants at this locus are selectively neutral, so Pr(A1fix) = Pr(A2fix) = Pr(A3fix) =...= Pr(A2Nfix). For any given allele present at t=0, the probability of fixation is therefore 12N.



Now define allelic variants A and a as complementary, non-overlapping groups of the initial alleles, such that nA + na = 2N. From the above, the probability of fixation of an allele within group A is nA12N=nA2N=p0.


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