Analytical results on the Muller's ratchet effect in growing populations

Abstract

Fontanari et al introduced [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 218101 (2003)] a model for studying the Muller's ratchet phenomenon in growing asexual populations. They studied two situations, either including or not a death probability for each newborn, but were able to find analytical (recursive) expressions only in the no-decay case. In this paper a branching process formalism is used to find recorrence equations that generalize the analytical results of the original paper besides confirming the interesting effects their simulations revealed.