Obviously, P. formosa is not a mouse and there is much room for improving the precision of such mutation rate estimates, even in mice.
Although the SNP density measure can be biased by heterogeneity in the mutation rate, the allele frequency spectrum is free from such mutation rate biases (Fay et al. 2002) and thus is likely to be a more accurate measure of selective constraint than SNP density.
As current evidence seems hardly compatible with such low mutation rates or such a young age of P. formosa, the quest for mechanisms that help this fish escape genomic decay seems to be valid.
As such many techniques have been developed which measure the key components of the evolution of resistance, such as mutation rates, costs of resistance, compensatory evolution, multidrug resistance, and selection gradients.
Further, greater recombination rates may not increase the efficacy of purging at such high mutation rates.
It is more likely that segregation, rather than recombination rate, is the factor limiting purging at such high mutation rates.
For example, the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm [21] can sample plausible tree structures according to the likelihood; then, based on the ensemble of these trees, evolutionary parameters such as mutation rates can be estimated [22].
Although our methodology is based on a stochastic model of CML microevolution, the algorithm itself does not require measurements of any parameters (such as mutation rates, or division/death rates of cells), and can be used by medical professionals without a mathematical background.
One useful feature of this algorithm is that it does not require measurements of any parameters (such as mutation rates, or division/death rates of cells), but relies entirely on the knowledge of the number and resistance types of mutants associated with each of the drugs in use.
Our model reproduced common experimental observations on heterosis using only biologically justified parameters, such as mutation rates.
In some modeling exercises, predicted parameters such as mutation rates can be experimentally validated, though in this case the values are somewhat difficult to obtain reliably.
