On the prospect of achieving accurate joint estimation of selection with population history

Abstract

As both natural selection and population history can affect genome-wide patterns of variation, disentangling the contributions of each has remained as a major challenge in population genetics. We here discuss historical and recent progress towards this goal-highlighting theoretical and computational challenges that remain to be addressed, as well as inherent difficulties in dealing with model complexity and model violations-and offer thoughts on potentially fruitful next steps.

Keywords: background selection; demography; genetic hitchhiking; natural selection; population history; statistical inference.