Simulating allele frequencies in a population and the genetic differentiation of populations under mutation pressure.

A method is developed for simulating the allele frequencies in an equilibrium or transient population under the effects of neutral mutation and random drift. The method is based on diffusion theory and is fast so that it can be used to study in detail the distribution of heterozygosity or any quantity that can be expressed as a function of allele frequencies. It has been applied to study the distribution of heterozygosity and the distribution of the frequencies of the first three most frequent alleles in a population. It also has been applied to study the distribution of the number of alleles shared by two populations that were derived from a common stock.