Abstract
We read with great interest the paper by Williams, et. al.[1], who argued for neutral evolution in tumors by analyzing The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data. They supported this conclusion by showing high R2 values for fits to a neutral evolution model predicting M ∝ 1 / f, where M is the number of somatic mutations with allele frequency ≥ f. However, we believe a conclusion of neutrality must be treated cautiously, as high R2 values are consistent with many evolutionary models.
Copyright
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Posted May 04, 2017.
Uncertainties in tumor allele frequencies limit power to infer evolutionary pressures
