Fig. 1

Wright Fisher process of tumor progression. a Representation of genotypes. The genotypes of all cells are modeled with n = 10 superdriver and m = 100 driver loci. Every locus is susceptible to a mutation event (red asterisk) with the same probability in any cell in each generation. b Growing population of tumor cells. The system starts with 10⁶ wild-type cells, i.e., genotypes without any mutated loci, and grows exponentially to 10⁹ cells acquiring multiple superdriver and driver mutations. Every mutation increases the fitness of a cell and hence the likelihood of sampling an offspring which will carry that same mutation