- F-statistics
In
population genetics , "F"-statistics (also known as fixation indices) describe the level of heterozygosity in a population; more specifically the degree of (usually) a reduction in heterozygosity when compared to Hardy-Weinberg expectation. F-statistics can also be thought of as a measure of the correlation between genes drawn at different levels of a (hierarchically) subdivided population. This correlation is influenced by several evolutionary processes, such as mutation, migration,inbreeding ,natural selection , or theWahlund effect , but it was originally designed to measure the amount of allelic fixation owing to genetic drift.The concept of "F"-statistics was developed during the 1920s by the American
geneticist Sewall Wright , who was interested in inbreeding incattle . However, becausecomplete dominance causes thephenotype s of homozygote dominants and heterozygotes to be the same, it was not until the advent ofmolecular genetics from the 1960s onwards that heterozygosity in populations could be measured.Definitions and equations
The measures FIS, Fst, and FIT are related to the amounts of heterozygosity at various levels of population structure. Together, they are called F-statistics, and are derived from "F", the inbreeding coefficient. In a simple two-allele system with inbreeding, the genotypic frequencies are:
: for AA; for Aa; and for aa.
The value for F is found by solving the equation for F using heterozygotes in the above inbred population. This becomes one minus the observed number of heterozygotes in a population divided by its expected number of heterozygotes at Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium:
:
where the expected value at Hardy–Weinberg equilibrium is given by
:
where "p" and "q" are the
allele frequencies of A and a, respectively. It is also the probability that at any locus, two alleles from a random individuum of the population are identical by descent.For example, consider the data from
E.B. Ford (1971) on a single population of thescarlet tiger moth :From this, the
allele frequencies can be calculated, and the expectation of f(AA) derived:The different F-statistics look at different levels of population structure. FIT is the inbreeding coefficient of an individual (I) relative to the total (T) population, as above; FIS is the inbreeding coefficient of an individual (I) relative to the subpopulation (S), using the above for subpopulations and averaging them; and FST is the effect of subpopulations (S) compared to the total population (T), and is calculated by solving the equation::as shown in the next section.
Partition due to population structure
Consider a population that has a
population structure of two levels; one from the individual (I) to the subpopulation (S) and one from the subpopulation to the total (T). Then the total "F", known here as "F""IT", can be partitioned into "F""IS" (or "f") and "F""ST" (or "θ")::
This may be further partitioned for population substructure, and it expands according to the rules of
binomial expansion , so that for "I" partitions::
Fst
A reformulation of the definition of F would be the ratio of the average number of differences between pairs of chromosomes sampled within diploid individuals with the average number obtained when sampling chromosomes randomly from the population (excluding the grouping per individual).One can modify this definition and consider a grouping per sub-population instead of per individual. Population geneticists have used that idea to measure the degree of structure in a population.
Unfortunately, there is a large number of definitions for
Fst , causing some confusion in the scientific literature. A common definition is the following:where the variance of is computed across sub-populations and is the expected frequency of heterozygotes.
Effective population size
"F" can be used to define
effective population size .Path coefficients
External links
* [http://www.library.auckland.ac.nz/subjects/bio/pdfs/733Pop-g-stats2.pdf Shane's Simple Guide to F-Statistics]
* [http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb348/lecture-notes/genetic-structure.pdf Analyzing the genetic structure of populations]
* [http://darwin.eeb.uconn.edu/eeb348/lecture-notes/wahlund/wahlund.html Wahlund effect, Wright's F-statistics]
* [http://www.uwyo.edu/dbmcd/popecol/Maylects/FST.html Worked example of calculating F-statistics from genotypic data]
* [http://helix.mcmaster.ca/brent/node10.html IAM based F-statistics]
* [http://eco-tools.njit.edu/webMathematica/EcoTools/Fstats-1-1/Introduction.html F-statistics for Population Genetics Eco-Tool]
* [http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~mcvean/slides7.pdf Population Structure (slides)]References
ee also
*
Inbreeding coefficient
*Malecot's method of coancestry
*Heterozygosity
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