Abstract:

After Darwin’s natural selection theory emerged, Kimura proposed the theory of neutral evolution in 1968, which considered neutral mutations and random genetic drift as the major evolutionary forces. In the following years, various kinds of methods were developed to test whether natural selection has ever happened. With the improvement of DNA sequencing technologies, large amount of DNA sequence polymorphism data is available, providing a mass of materials for testing the natural selection theory. Since natural selection would leave its footprint on the genome, we are able to refer the adaptive evolutionary history of a population. On the other hand, population demographic history and other evolutionary forces may affect DNA polymorphic pattern in similar way, which may interfere with tests. In this paper, we summarized some basic concepts of neutral test, and briefly introduced some classical methods. Focus was given to several recently developed methods.