Phylodynamic inference on single-cell data
The way mutations accumulate over the course of evolution fundamentally differs between macroevolutionary settings and cellular reproduction. In macroevolution, mutations generally accumulate continuously over time. Under cellular reproduction, like somatic evolution within a tumour or evolution within a bacterial population, mutations largely occur in discrete steps at individual reproductive events. This affects the mutation statistics and the inference from phylogenetic data. For instance, under cellular reproduction, mutations along a phylogenetic branch follow a compound Poisson statistics rather than a Poisson statistics. I discuss an inference scheme based on cellular reproduction and applications in somatic evolution, especially lineage trees from single-cell data.