Purpose of Simulation
The purpose of the simulation is to understand how to interpret microsatellite experimental data from mosquito blood meal by using the simulator to model the experiment. The simulation simulates a human population and a mosquito population and a mosquito-human interaction. In addition, there is a model of PCR experiment.
In this experiment, the allele frequency is an important factor of human population simulation. As a first approximation, this information is usually difficult or impossible to obtain, but may be approximated by the distribution of allele in the blood meal, provided the number of multiple feedings is sufficiently low. For example, if every mosquito feeds on a single human, then the mosquito are simply sampling the human population.
Depending on Hardy Weinberg Theory, we also simulate human population by the allele frequency obtained from all blood meal samples. The simulated human population will be fed to simulated mosquito group. We used the simulator to answer the following questions:
- How does the resulting blood meal probabilities depend on the theoretical blood meal probabilities?
- Depending on the number of microsatellite loci analyzed, how does the resulting blood meal probabilities vary?
- How does the PCR detection probability influence experimental observation?
- What can be learned about the allele frequencies in human population from the allele in the blood meal, departure from the Hardy-Weinberg distribution, measured by an inbreeding coefficient?