title: Frequentist estimation of coalescence times from nucleotide sequence data using a tree-based partition.
abstract: This article proposes a method of estimating the time to the most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of a sample of DNA sequences. The method is based on the molecular clock hypothesis, but avoids assumptions about population structure. Simulations show that in a wide range of situations, the point estimate has small bias and the confidence interval has at least the nominal coverage probability. We discuss conditions that can lead to biased estimates. Performance of this estimator is compared with existing methods based on the coalescence theory. The method is applied to sequences of Y chromosomes and mtDNAs to estimate the coalescent times of human male and female populations.
authors.affiliation: Department of Statistics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, USA.
authors.forename: Hua
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.forename: David O
authors.initials: DO
authors.lastname: Siegmund
authors.forename: Peidong
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.forename: Peter J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: Oefner
authors.forename: Marcus W
authors.initials: MW
authors.lastname: Feldman
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D001483:Base Sequence; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004247:DNA; D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial; D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009154:Mutation; D010802:Phylogeny; D015983:Selection Bias; D013223:Statistics as Topic; D014998:Y Chromosome
chemical_list: D004272:DNA, Mitochondrial; D004247:DNA