Natural selection inference and sampling formulae

Theory of evolution provides a simple, flexible, and elegant framework to study and explain life around us. Population genetics is a mathematical wing of evolutionary theory. One of its key results connects steady state distribution of observable traits in a population with evolutionary parameters like mutation rate and fitness landscape in which the population is evolving. If number of trait types is very large, which is a relevant limit for molecular biology, then Ewens sampling formula provides a description of the steady state for the case with no natural selection acting on the population. We provide a generalization of this formula to arbitrary fitness landscape and use it to infer distribution of mutation rate and selection pressure along fruit fly chromosomes from sequenced data.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference