Non-equilibrium population genetics : sex-biased demography and mutational load
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- Elucidating the relationship between a population's history and its genetic data is a central goal of population genetics. The recent deluge of genetic sequence data makes it possible to test long-standing hypothesis about human demographic history and evolution, and to assess the validity of commonly-used equilibrium assumptions. In this thesis, I focus on questions in human population genetics concerning deleterious mutational load and sex-biased demography. In Chapter 2, I test the hypothesis that the load of deleterious alleles varies across populations and find evidence that it does, possibly due to differing demographic histories. In Chapter 3, I present a new method to estimate the female fraction of the effective population size and apply it globally distributed data. I find evidence for a pervasive female bias and a male-biased bottleneck during the Out-of-Africa migration. In Chapter 4, I study more recent demographic events which led to the peopling of Central and South America and the formation of admixed populations. I apply a novel test for sex-biased admixture to genomic data and find support for varying, sex-biased histories among populations. These chapters highlight the importance of modeling demographic history in hypothesis testing, and demonstrate ways in which current population genetic inference can be extended. This thesis sheds light on the non-equilibrium nature of human populations genetics and its results give insight into our shared history.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2015 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Musharoff, Shaila A |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Program in Genetics. |
| Primary advisor | Bustamante, Carlos |
| Thesis advisor | Bustamante, Carlos |
| Thesis advisor | Feldman, Marcus W |
| Thesis advisor | Montgomery, Stephen, 1979- |
| Thesis advisor | Petrov, Dmitri Alex, 1969- |
| Thesis advisor | Tang, Hua |
| Advisor | Feldman, Marcus W |
| Advisor | Montgomery, Stephen, 1979- |
| Advisor | Petrov, Dmitri Alex, 1969- |
| Advisor | Tang, Hua |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Shaila A. Musharoff. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Program in Genetics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2015. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2015 by Shaila Ahsan Musharoff
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
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