Microbial populations under selection

Abstract

This chapter gives a synopsis of recent approaches to model and analyse the evolution of microbial populations under selection. The first part reviews two population genetic models of Lenski’s long-term evolution experiment with Escherichia coli, where models aim at explaining the observed curve of the evolution of the mean fitness. The second part describes a model of a host-pathogen system where the population of pathogens experiences balancing selection, migration, and mutation, as motivated by observations of the genetic diversity of HCMV (the human cytomegalovirus) across hosts.