Recombination Processes and Nonlinear Markov Chains

Journal of Computational Biology. 2016. Vol. 23. No. 9. P. 711–717.

Pirogov S., et a., Gelfand M. S.

Bacteria are known to exchange genetic information by horizontal gene transfer. Since the frequency of homologous recombination depends on the similarity between the recombining segments, several studies examined whether this could lead to the emergence of subspecies. Most of them simulated fixed-size Wright-Fisher populations, in which the genetic drift should be taken into account. Here, we use nonlinear Markov processes to describe a bacterial population evolving under mutation and recombination. We consider a population structure as a probability measure on the space of genomes. This approach implies the infinite population size limit, and thus, the genetic drift is not assumed. We prove that under these conditions, the emergence of subspecies is impossible.

Keywords: evolution, genome, speciation