Year: 2014
Type: article
Abstract: Evolutionary models that make use of site-specific parameters have recently been criticized on the grounds that parameter estimates obtained under such models can be unreliable and lack theoretical guarantees of convergence. We present a simulation study providing empirical evidence that a simple version of the models in question does exhibit sensible convergence behavior and that additional taxa, despite not being independent of each other, lead to improved parameter estimates. Although it would be desirable to have theoretical guarantees of this, we argue that such guarantees would not be sufficient to justify the use of these models in practice. Instead, we emphasize the importance of taking the variance of parameter estimates into account rather than blindly trusting point estimates - this is standardly done by using the models to construct statistical hypothesis tests, which are then validated empirically via simulation studies.
Source: PLoS ONE
Institutions: Stellenbosch University, University of California San Diego
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $2,382
Awards: Modeling HIV Escape from Neutralizing Antibody Respones, G1812340134, BIOMATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS OF VIRAL DYNAMICS AND EVOLUTION, A Multi-Site Investigation into the Effect of HIV Clade on Neurocognition, Biomathematical Analysis of Viral Dynamics and Evolution, BIOMATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS OF VIRAL DYNAMICS AND EVOLUTION, Intrahost HIV population dynamics in CNS and other tissues, Molecular Epidemiology for HIV Prevention for Drug Users and Other Risk Groups , Determinants of HIV Transmission, HyPhy: comprehensive, fast, and user-friendly software for evolutionary analysis, G9000031394, G9000128192, San Diego Center for AIDS Research (SD CFAR)
OpenAlex ID: W2036475287