Child mortality in Penna ageing model

TL;DR

This paper modifies the Penna ageing model to focus on mutations affecting young ages, resulting in a mortality pattern with high early mortality, a minimum, then exponential increase with age.

Contribution

It introduces a new assumption that mutations mainly affect young ages, altering the mortality curve in the Penna model.

Findings

Enhanced early-age mortality observed

Mortality curve shows a minimum after early deaths

Exponential increase of mortality with age confirmed

Abstract

Assuming the deleterious mutations in the Penna ageing model to affect mainly the young ages, we get an enhanced mortality at very young age, followed by a minimum of the mortality, and then the usual exponential increase of mortality with age.