Thesis supervisor: András József Tóbiás
Location of studies (in Hungarian): Department of Computer Science and Information Theory Abbreviation of location of studies: SZIT
Description of the research topic:
In biology, clonal interference is the interaction of multiple beneficial mutations fighting for survival simultaneously in a monomorphic resident population. In a related ongoing research project, we introduced a family of interacting trajectories of a Poisson point process featuring clonal interference that arise as the large-population limit of population-genetic models with mutation and selection under a suitable scaling of time, mutation frequency and selective advantages. In particular, the frequency of mutations is such that there is clonal interference between a finite number of relevant mutant families at any given time. The limiting process describes the growth of mutant populations on the logarithmic scale; it is a piecewise linear process that is a deterministic function of the random birth times and selective advantages of the successful mutants.
A PhD candidate in Informatics working on this subject can complement this work via numerical results and methodological development in one or both of the following directions.
1. Analysing the speed of convergence of the rescaled population-genetic model to the limiting process numerically. Implementing and improving existing simulation techniques or developing novel ones for stochastic individual-based models in continuous time (e.g., the Moran model) that allow for simulating a larger population size.
2. In the aforementioned project we verified the existence of the speed of increase of fitness for the limiting process, but in the general case, computing this speed is difficult. A related task in computer science is to study this speed of adaptation numerically, and to test existing heuristics (e.g., the Gerrish-Lenski heuristics and its refined version) and develop new ones approximating this speed via simple formulas.
Required language skills: english Number of students who can be accepted: 1
Deadline for application: 2023-01-10
2024. IV. 17. ODT ülés Az ODT következő ülésére 2024. június 14-én, pénteken 10.00 órakor kerül sor a Semmelweis Egyetem Szenátusi termében (Bp. Üllői út 26. I. emelet).
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