A time-dependent Poisson random field model for polymorphism within and between two related biological species (Q1958496)

The authors derive a Poisson random field model for population site polymorphism differences within and between two species that share a relatively common ancestor. The results are used to derive the distribution of sample statistics for aligned DNA sequences arising from two related but not two distantly related species. The statistics are found to be independent Poisson with means depending on the population parameters for mutation and selection rates. These lead to likehood methods for the estimation of mutation, selection, and divergence time parameters. All the theoretical results are proved mathematically.