Friday 29 March 2024 |
Events for day: Thursday 14 September 2017 |
10:00 - 11:00 Special Seminar The effect of randomness on the fate of mutants: Minority rules School BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES Abstract: In this research, we study the effect of spatial randomness on the chances of mutant fixation in a population of individuals of a constant size. Such problems arise in models of cancer initiation and progression, bacterial dynamics, and drug resistance. It turns out that spatial heterogeneity rede fines the notion of neutrality, allowing, e.g., a minority of cells (whose fitness values are drawn from the same distribution as that of the wild type) to behave as if they had a selective advantage. The effect can be very significant (increasing the probability of mutant inva ... |