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Updated: Jul 8, 2025
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Monitoring Spatial Segregation in Surface Colonizing Microbial Populations
Published on: October 29, 2016
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Selective sweep probabilities in spatially expanding populations.
Alexander Stein1, Ramanarayanan Kizhuttil2, Maciej Bak3
1Centre for Cancer Genomics and Computational Biology, Barts Cancer Institute, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK and Department of Physics, ETH Zurich, Zürich, Switzerland.
Biorxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
|December 11, 2023
Summary
Beneficial mutations can sweep through expanding populations, but this is rare in established tumors. New models predict sweep probabilities independent of mutation rate, offering insights into cancer evolution.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary biology
- Mathematical modeling
Background:
- Range expansions are crucial in shaping biological systems, from microbes to invasive species.
- A key question is whether beneficial mutations can overcome clonal interference during expansion.
- Existing models often simplify range expansions or ignore spatial structure.
Conclusions:
- Selective sweeps are rare in established human tumors, explaining recent sequencing findings.
- Model provides a general, pan-cancer explanation for the rarity of sweeps.
- Insights are applicable to various biological systems undergoing range expansions.
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