2002/05/01 by Hua Tang, David Siegmund, Peidong Shen +2 · 2 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Mathematics · #Genetic diversity and population structure #Forensic and Genetic Research #Genomics and Phylogenetic Studies #Coalescent theory #Biology #Estimator #Frequentist inference #Most recent common ancestor #Point estimation #Inference #Statistics #Confidence interval #Molecular clock #Coalescence (physics) #Population #Evolutionary biology #Genetics #Computational biology #Mathematics #Computer science #Bayesian probability #Gene #Phylogenetic tree #Bayesian inference
paper · pdf · doi:10.1093/genetics/161.1.447
openalex publication_date 2002/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01
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.