Genetic Drift and Mutation

Select on the main menu Drift and then select Drift + Mutation. To see Genetic Drift with Selection click here and with selection and mutation click here.

A window like the figure below will be displayed. The initial values have to be supplied for the simulation: population size, number of populations, initial allele frequency (p) and number of generations to simulate. After entering these values, provide mutation rates from one allele to the other, either uni-directional or bi-directional (m is the rate to the mutation from A to a, and v is the rate to the mutation from a to A). Click OK and the simulation will run for the determined number of generations and the main graph will be displayed.

The result will be plotted in a regular cartesian graph, the curves representing the allele frequency in each population. The final number of populations with fixed or lost alleles are displayed on the right top corner of the main graph. As an aid to understanding the drift process and its effects on allele frequencies a bar graph with 10 classes of allele frequencies is also shown on the right side of the window. Clicking on Save File will generate a text file with allele and genotype frequencies for all populations simulated along the selected number of generations.