@article {38552, title = {A Tutorial of the Poisson Random Field Model in Population Genetics}, journal = {Advances in BioinformaticsAdvances in Bioinformatics}, volume = {2008}, year = {2008}, type = {10.1155/2008/257864}, abstract = {Population genetics is the study of allele frequency changes driven by various evolutionary forces such as mutation, natural selection, and random genetic drift. Although natural selection is widely recognized as a bona-fide phenomenon, the extent to which it drives evolution continues to remain unclear and controversial. Various qualitative techniques, or so-called {\textquotedblleft}tests of neutrality{\textquotedblright}, have been introduced to detect signatures of natural selection. A decade and a half ago, Stanley Sawyer and Daniel Hartl provided a mathematical framework, referred to as the Poisson random field (PRF), with which to determine quantitatively the intensity of selection on a particular gene or genomic region. The recent availability of large-scale genetic polymorphism data has sparked widespread interest in genome-wide investigations of natural selection. To that end, the original PRF model is of particular interest for geneticists and evolutionary genomicists. In this article, we will provide a tutorial of the mathematical derivation of the original Sawyer and Hartl PRF model.}, isbn = {1687-8027, 1687-8035}, author = {Sethupathy, Praveen and Sridhar Hannenhalli} }