A neutral theory of genome evolution and the frequency distribution of genes

BMC Genomics

Table 1 Overview of model fits

Model A assumes a constant population size, and the same gene transfer process for all genes. Model B assumes an exponentially growing population size. Model C assumes that a part of the genome is shared by all genomes (a rigid core); the other part is subjected to the same gene transfer process as in model A. Model D assumes two parts in the genomes, governed by different gene transfer rates. We determined for the four models the parameters that minimize the distance Δ between the empirical and the theoretical gene frequency distribution (see Materials and Methods for the definition of Δ). For each of the 6 bacterial species analyzed, we report the number of analyzed genomes G, the genome size M (average number of genes per genome), the distance Δ for the model fits, the genomic fluidity φ^obs estimated on the data, and the fluidity φ^pred for the model fits. Recall that model A has one parameter, models B and C have two parameters, and model D has three parameters.

ISSN: 1471-2164