Mutation probabilities and moments of step functions

Series
Mathematical Biology Seminar
Time
Friday, April 16, 2021 - 3:00pm for 1 hour (actually 50 minutes)
Location
ONLINE
Speaker
Zvi Rosen – Florida Atlantic University – http://zvihrosen.com/
Organizer
Bo Lin

Suppose that n sample genomes are collected from the same population. The expected sample frequency spectrum (SFS) is the vector of probabilities that a mutation chosen at random will appear in exactly k out of the n individuals. This vector is known to be highly dependent on the population size history (demography); for this reason, geneticists have used it for demographic inference. What does the set of all possible vectors generated by demographies look like? What if we specify that the demography has to be piecewise-constant with a fixed number of pieces? We will draw on tools from convex and algebraic geometry to answer these and related questions.

Meeting Link: https://gatech.bluejeans.com/348270750