The most viewed preprints on Haldane’s Sieve in November 2012 were:

• The McDonald-Kreitman Test and its Extensions under Frequent Adaptation: Problems and Solutions. Messer and Petrov demonstrate that the effects of natural selection on linked loci can cause errors in the inference of demography and/or the rate of positive selection, and propose a solution. An “Our paper” post is here.
• The genetic architecture of adaptations to high altitude in Ethiopia. Alkorta-Aranburu et al. use population genetics and genome-wide association studies to examine the genetics of human adaptation to high altitude in Ethiopia.
• Lateral Gene Transfer from the Dead. Szöllősi et al. examine the role of gene transfer from extinct species in the history of cyanobacteria.
• Response to Horizontal gene transfer may explain variation in θs. Martincorena and Luscombe respond to a preprint by Maddamsetti et al. questioning the results of their paper on variation in mutation rates across genes in E. coli. Both entries in this exchange were highly viewed this month.
• Improved haplotyping of rare variants using next-generation sequence data. Zakharia and Bustamante present a statistical model for haplotype phasing that uses the information present in paired-read sequencing data.