Asymptotic behavior of the rate of adaptation

Citation
Yu, Feng et al., Asymptotic behavior of the rate of adaptation, Annals of applied probability , 20(3), 2010, pp. 978-1004
ISSN journal
10505164
Volume
20
Issue
3
Year of publication
2010
Pages
978 - 1004
Database
ACNP
SICI code
Abstract
We consider the accumulation of beneficial and deleterious mutations in large asexual populations. The rate of adaptation is affected by the total mutation rate, proportion of beneficial mutations and population size N. We show that regardless of mutation rates, as long as the proportion of beneficial mutations is strictly positive, the adaptation rate is at least O(log1..N) where . can be any small positive number, if the population size is sufficiently large. This shows that if the genome is modeled as continuous, there is no limit to natural selection, that is, the rate of adaptation grows in N without bound.