Coalescent theory

Coalescent theory is a retrospective stochastic model of population genetics that relates genetic diversity in a sample to demographic history of the population from which it was taken. That is, it is a model of the effect of genetic drift, viewed backwards in time, on the genealogy of antecedents. It comprises a probabilistic assessment of variation in time to common ancestry of alleles in a relatively small sample of individuals, from a much larger population. This includes consideration of all pathways of inheritance through which sampled copies of a homologous DNA element are traced back to a single ancestral copy, known as the most recent common ancestor (MRCA; sometimes also termed the coancestor to emphasize the coalescent relationship). The inheritance relationships among alleles a

Coalescent theory

Coalescent theory is a retrospective stochastic model of population genetics that relates genetic diversity in a sample to demographic history of the population from which it was taken. That is, it is a model of the effect of genetic drift, viewed backwards in time, on the genealogy of antecedents. It comprises a probabilistic assessment of variation in time to common ancestry of alleles in a relatively small sample of individuals, from a much larger population. This includes consideration of all pathways of inheritance through which sampled copies of a homologous DNA element are traced back to a single ancestral copy, known as the most recent common ancestor (MRCA; sometimes also termed the coancestor to emphasize the coalescent relationship). The inheritance relationships among alleles a