A time-dependent Poisson random field model for polymorphism within and between two related biological species

Abstract: We derive a Poisson random field model for population site polymorphisms differences within and between two species that share a relatively recent common ancestor. The model can be either equilibrium or time inhomogeneous. We first consider a random field of Markov chains that describes the fate of a set of individual mutations. This field is approximated by a Poisson random field from which we can make inferences about the amounts of mutation and selection that have occurred in the history of observed aligned DNA sequences.