scholarly journals RATE OF GENE SILENCING AT DUPLICATE LOCI: A THEORETICAL STUDY AND INTERPRETATION OF DATA FROM TETRAPLOID FISHES

Genetics ◽  
1980 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 237-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wen-Hsiung Li

ABSTRACT A large-scale simulation has been conducted on the rate of gene loss at duplicate loci under irreversible mutation. It is found that tight linkage does not provide a strong sheltering effect, as thought by previous authors; indeed, the mean loss time for the case of tight linkage is of the same order of magnitude as that for no linkage, as long as Nu is not much larger than 1, where N is the effective population size and u the mutation rate. When Nu is 0.01 or less, the two loci behave almost as neutral loci, regardless of linkage, and the mean loss time is about only half the mean extinction time for a neutral allele under irreversible mutation. However, the former becomes two or more times larger than the latter when Nu ≥ 1.—In the simulation, the sojourn times in the frequency intervals (0, 001) and (0.99, 1) and the time for the frequency of the null allele to reach 0.99 at one of the two loci have also been recorded. The results show that the populatian is monomorphic for the normal allele most of the time if Nu ≤ 0.01, but polymorphic for the null and the normal alleles most of the time if Nu ≥ 0.1.—The distribution of the frequency of the null allele in an equilibrium tetraploid population has been studied analytically. The present results have been applied to interpret data from some fish groups that are of tetraploid origin, and a model for explaining the slow rate of gene loss in these fishes is proposed.

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 230 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fangda Cui ◽  
Xiaolong Geng ◽  
Brian Robinson ◽  
Thomas King ◽  
Kenneth Lee ◽  
...  

Knowledge of the droplet size distribution (DSD) of spilled oil is essential for the accurate prediction of oil transport, dissolution, and biodegradation. Breaking waves play important roles in oil droplet formation in oceanic environments. To understand the effects of breaking waves on oil DSD, oil spill experiments were designed and performed in a large-scale wave tank. A plunging breaker with a height of about 0.4 m was produced using the dispersive focusing method within the tank. Oil placed within the breaker resulted in a DSD that was measured using a shadowgraph camera and found to fit a Gaussian distribution N (µ = 1.2 mm, σ2 = 0.29 mm2). For droplets smaller than 1500 µm, the number-based DSD matched the DS1988 correlation, which gives N(d) ~ d−2.3, but this was N(d) ~ d−9.7 for droplets larger than 1500 µm. An order of magnitude investigation revealed that a Gaussian volume-based DSD results in a number-based DSD that may be approximated by d−b (with b ≈ 2) for small diameters (relative to the mean), which explains the occurrence of the DS1988 correlation. With the measured wave hydrodynamics, the VDROP model was adopted to simulate the DSD, which closely matched the observed DSD. The present results reduce the empiricism of the DS1988 correlation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (5) ◽  
pp. 1725-1745 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly A. Hoogewind ◽  
Daniel R. Chavas ◽  
Benjamin A. Schenkel ◽  
Morgan E O’Neill

AbstractGlobally, on the order of 100 tropical cyclones (TCs) occur annually, yet the processes that control this number remain unknown. Here we test a simple hypothesis that this number is limited by the geography of thermodynamic environments favorable for TC formation and maintenance. First, climatologies of TC potential intensity and environmental ventilation are created from reanalyses and are used in conjunction with historical TC data to define the spatiotemporal geography of favorable environments. Based on a range of predefined separation distances, the geographic domain of environmental favorability is populated with randomly placed TCs assuming a fixed minimum separation distance to achieve a maximum daily packing density of storms. Inclusion of a fixed storm duration yields an annual “maximum potential genesis” (MPG) rate, which is found to be an order of magnitude larger than the observed rate on Earth. The mean daily packing density captures the seasonal cycle reasonably well for both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, though it substantially overestimates TC counts outside of each hemisphere’s active seasons. Interannual variability in MPG is relatively small and is poorly correlated with annual storm count globally and across basins, though modest positive correlations are found in the North Atlantic and east Pacific basins. Overall, the spatiotemporal distribution of favorable environmental conditions appears to strongly modulate the seasonal cycle of TCs, which certainly strongly influences the TC climatology, though it does not explicitly constrain the global annual TC count. Our methodology provides the first estimate of an upper bound for annual TC frequency and outlines a framework for assessing how local and large-scale factors may act to limit global TC count below the maximum potential values found here.


Genetics ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 86 (4) ◽  
pp. 901-914
Author(s):  
Wen-Hsiung Li ◽  
Masatoshi Nei

ABSTRACT Mathematical studies are conducted on three problems that arise in molecular population genetics. (1) The time required for a particular allele to become extinct in a population under the effects of mutation, selection, and random genetic drift is studied. In the absence of selection, the mean extinction time of an allele with an initial frequency close to 1 is of the order of the reciprocal of the mutation rate when 4Nv << 1, where N is the effective population size and v is the mutation rate per generation. Advantageous mutations reduce the extinction time considerably, whereas deleterious mutations increase it tremendously even if the effect on fitness is very slight. (2) Mathematical formulae are derived for the distribution and the moments of extinction time of a particular allele from one or both of two related populations or species under the assumption of no selection. When 4Nv << 1, the mean extinction time is about half that for a single population, if the two populations are descended from a common original stock. (3) The expected number as well as the proportion of common neutral alleles shared by two related species at the tth generation after their separation are studied. It is shown that if 4Nv is small, the two species are expected to share a high proportion of common alleles even 4N generations after separation. In addition to the above mathematical studies, the implications of our results for the common alleles at protein loci in related Drosophila species and for the degeneration of unused characters in cave animals are discussed.


1966 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 313-323 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. D. H. Latter

The effects of tight linkage on the total response due to pairs of identical additive loci, segregating in a population initially in linkage equilibrium, have been studied both algebraically and by means of computer simulation. Particular attention has been given to the effects of finite population size on the probabilities of (a) the elimination from the population of the gamete carrying both ‘plus’ alleles; (b) the joint preservation of the two types of repulsion gametes; (c) the recovery of the desired combination of plus alleles through crossing-over; and (d) the fixation of the gamete in the population following its recovery.The study is restricted to situations in which linkage is known to have an appreciable effect on total selection response, i.e. to the case of genes of large effect initially at low frequency. A comparison of regimes with the same expected response under free recombination has shown the probability of (a) to be high, and the probability of (b) to be very nearly the same for all regimes tested. Provided that the recovery of the gamete carrying both plus alleles is an unlikely event at any given point in time, the probability of the fixation of the gamete, once reconstituted, is expected to be independent of population size for genes of large effect. In this context, approximate algebraic expressions have been derived for the probability of effective recovery of the required gamete, and for the mean waiting time involved.


Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1021
Author(s):  
Bernhard Dorweiler ◽  
Pia Elisabeth Baqué ◽  
Rayan Chaban ◽  
Ahmed Ghazy ◽  
Oroa Salem

As comparative data on the precision of 3D-printed anatomical models are sparse, the aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of 3D-printed models of vascular anatomy generated by two commonly used printing technologies. Thirty-five 3D models of large (aortic, wall thickness of 2 mm, n = 30) and small (coronary, wall thickness of 1.25 mm, n = 5) vessels printed with fused deposition modeling (FDM) (rigid, n = 20) and PolyJet (flexible, n = 15) technology were subjected to high-resolution CT scans. From the resulting DICOM (Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine) dataset, an STL file was generated and wall thickness as well as surface congruency were compared with the original STL file using dedicated 3D engineering software. The mean wall thickness for the large-scale aortic models was 2.11 µm (+5%), and 1.26 µm (+0.8%) for the coronary models, resulting in an overall mean wall thickness of +5% for all 35 3D models when compared to the original STL file. The mean surface deviation was found to be +120 µm for all models, with +100 µm for the aortic and +180 µm for the coronary 3D models, respectively. Both printing technologies were found to conform with the currently set standards of accuracy (<1 mm), demonstrating that accurate 3D models of large and small vessel anatomy can be generated by both FDM and PolyJet printing technology using rigid and flexible polymers.


2020 ◽  
Vol 72 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chao Xiong ◽  
Claudia Stolle ◽  
Patrick Alken ◽  
Jan Rauberg

Abstract In this study, we have derived field-aligned currents (FACs) from magnetometers onboard the Defense Meteorological Satellite Project (DMSP) satellites. The magnetic latitude versus local time distribution of FACs from DMSP shows comparable dependences with previous findings on the intensity and orientation of interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) By and Bz components, which confirms the reliability of DMSP FAC data set. With simultaneous measurements of precipitating particles from DMSP, we further investigate the relation between large-scale FACs and precipitating particles. Our result shows that precipitation electron and ion fluxes both increase in magnitude and extend to lower latitude for enhanced southward IMF Bz, which is similar to the behavior of FACs. Under weak northward and southward Bz conditions, the locations of the R2 current maxima, at both dusk and dawn sides and in both hemispheres, are found to be close to the maxima of the particle energy fluxes; while for the same IMF conditions, R1 currents are displaced further to the respective particle flux peaks. Largest displacement (about 3.5°) is found between the downward R1 current and ion flux peak at the dawn side. Our results suggest that there exists systematic differences in locations of electron/ion precipitation and large-scale upward/downward FACs. As outlined by the statistical mean of these two parameters, the FAC peaks enclose the particle energy flux peaks in an auroral band at both dusk and dawn sides. Our comparisons also found that particle precipitation at dawn and dusk and in both hemispheres maximizes near the mean R2 current peaks. The particle precipitation flux maxima closer to the R1 current peaks are lower in magnitude. This is opposite to the known feature that R1 currents are on average stronger than R2 currents.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Parsoa Khorsand ◽  
Fereydoun Hormozdiari

Abstract Large scale catalogs of common genetic variants (including indels and structural variants) are being created using data from second and third generation whole-genome sequencing technologies. However, the genotyping of these variants in newly sequenced samples is a nontrivial task that requires extensive computational resources. Furthermore, current approaches are mostly limited to only specific types of variants and are generally prone to various errors and ambiguities when genotyping complex events. We are proposing an ultra-efficient approach for genotyping any type of structural variation that is not limited by the shortcomings and complexities of current mapping-based approaches. Our method Nebula utilizes the changes in the count of k-mers to predict the genotype of structural variants. We have shown that not only Nebula is an order of magnitude faster than mapping based approaches for genotyping structural variants, but also has comparable accuracy to state-of-the-art approaches. Furthermore, Nebula is a generic framework not limited to any specific type of event. Nebula is publicly available at https://github.com/Parsoa/Nebula.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 20
Author(s):  
Carlos Lassance ◽  
Yasir Latif ◽  
Ravi Garg ◽  
Vincent Gripon ◽  
Ian Reid

Vision-based localization is the problem of inferring the pose of the camera given a single image. One commonly used approach relies on image retrieval where the query input is compared against a database of localized support examples and its pose is inferred with the help of the retrieved items. This assumes that images taken from the same places consist of the same landmarks and thus would have similar feature representations. These representations can learn to be robust to different variations in capture conditions like time of the day or weather. In this work, we introduce a framework which aims at enhancing the performance of such retrieval-based localization methods. It consists in taking into account additional information available, such as GPS coordinates or temporal proximity in the acquisition of the images. More precisely, our method consists in constructing a graph based on this additional information that is later used to improve reliability of the retrieval process by filtering the feature representations of support and/or query images. We show that the proposed method is able to significantly improve the localization accuracy on two large scale datasets, as well as the mean average precision in classical image retrieval scenarios.


2008 ◽  
Vol 136 (6) ◽  
pp. 2006-2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng-Shang Lee ◽  
Kevin K. W. Cheung ◽  
Jenny S. N. Hui ◽  
Russell L. Elsberry

Abstract The mesoscale features of 124 tropical cyclone formations in the western North Pacific Ocean during 1999–2004 are investigated through large-scale analyses, satellite infrared brightness temperature (TB), and Quick Scatterometer (QuikSCAT) oceanic wind data. Based on low-level wind flow and surge direction, the formation cases are classified into six synoptic patterns: easterly wave (EW), northeasterly flow (NE), coexistence of northeasterly and southwesterly flow (NE–SW), southwesterly flow (SW), monsoon confluence (MC), and monsoon shear (MS). Then the general convection characteristics and mesoscale convective system (MCS) activities associated with these formation cases are studied under this classification scheme. Convection processes in the EW cases are distinguished from the monsoon-related formations in that the convection is less deep and closer to the formation center. Five characteristic temporal evolutions of the deep convection are identified: (i) single convection event, (ii) two convection events, (iii) three convection events, (iv) gradual decrease in TB, and (v) fluctuating TB, or a slight increase in TB before formation. Although no dominant temporal evolution differentiates cases in the six synoptic patterns, evolutions ii and iii seem to be the common routes taken by the monsoon-related formations. The overall percentage of cases with MCS activity at multiple times is 63%, and in 35% of cases more than one MCS coexisted. Most of the MC and MS cases develop multiple MCSs that lead to several episodes of deep convection. These two patterns have the highest percentage of coexisting MCSs such that potential interaction between these systems may play a role in the formation process. The MCSs in the monsoon-related formations are distributed around the center, except in the NE–SW cases in which clustering of MCSs is found about 100–200 km east of the center during the 12 h before formation. On average only one MCS occurs during an EW formation, whereas the mean value is around two for the other monsoon-related patterns. Both the mean lifetime and time of first appearance of MCS in EW are much shorter than those developed in other synoptic patterns, which indicates that the overall formation evolution in the EW case is faster. Moreover, this MCS is most likely to be found within 100 km east of the center 12 h before formation. The implications of these results to internal mechanisms of tropical cyclone formation are discussed in light of other recent mesoscale studies.


1971 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 15-19
Author(s):  
George B. Rybicki

AbstractIt is shown that the time of relaxation by particle encounters of self-gravitating systems in the plane interacting by 1/r2 forces is of the same order of magnitude as the mean orbit time. Therefore such a system does not have a Vlasov limit for large numbers of particles, unless appeal is made to some non-zero thickness of the disk. The relevance of this result to numerical experiments on galactic structure is discussed.


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