title: Analytical results on Muller's ratchet effect in growing populations.
abstract: Fontanari introduced [Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 218101 (2003)] a model for studying Muller's ratchet phenomenon in growing asexual populations. They studied two situations, either including a death probability for each newborn or not, but were able to find analytical (recursive) expressions only in the no-decay case. In this Brief Report a branching process formalism is used to find recurrence equations that generalize the analytical results of the original paper besides confirming the interesting effects their simulations revealed.
authors.affiliation: Instituto de Física de São Carlos, Universidade de São Paulo, Caixa Postal 369, 13560-970 São Carlos, SP, Brazil. lpmaia@ifsc.usp.br
authors.forename: Leonardo P
authors.initials: LP
authors.lastname: Maia
mesh_terms: D019143:Evolution, Molecular; D008957:Models, Genetic; D009154:Mutation; D011336:Probability; D012100:Reproduction, Asexual / Q000235:genetics*; D013269:Stochastic Processes