Related papers: Evolution favors protein mutational robustness in …

Different evolutionary models are known to make disparate predictions for the success of an invading mutant in some situations. For example, some evolutionary mechanics lead to amplification of selection in structured populations, while…

Evolvability is defined as the ability of a population to generate heritable variation to facilitate its adaptation to new environments or selection pressures. In this article, we consider evolvability as a phenotypic trait subject to…

It is likely that the strength of selection acting upon a mutation varies through time due to changes in the environment. However, most population genetic theory assumes that the strength of selection remains constant. Here we investigate…

Standard neutral population genetics theory with a strictly fixed population size has important limitations. An alternative model that allows independently fluctuating population sizes and reproduces the standard neutral evolution is…

We consider the evolution of populations under the joint action of mutation and differential reproduction, or selection. The population is modelled as a finite-type Markov branching process in continuous time, and the associated…

Several recent works have shown that protein structure can predict site-specific evolutionary sequence variation. In particular, sites that are buried and/or have many contacts with other sites in a structure have been shown to evolve more…

A fundamental issue discussed in evolutionary biology is the transition from unicellular to multicellular organisms. Here we develop non-robust models provided in [1] and attempt to get robust models investigated how differentiation of…

Most of the DNA that composes a complex organism is non-coding and defined as junk. Even the coding part is composed of genes that affect the phenotype differently. Therefore, a random mutation has an effect on the specimen fitness that…

Linked beneficial and deleterious mutations are known to decrease the fixation probability of a favorable mutation in large asexual populations. While the hindering effect of strongly deleterious mutations on adaptive evolution has been…

Some species exhibit very high levels of DNA sequence variability; there is also evidence for the existence of heritable epigenetic variants that experience state changes at a much higher rate than sequence variants. In both cases, the…

Speciation is of fundamental importance to understanding the huge diversity of life on Earth. In contrast to current phenomenological models, we develop a biophysically motivated approach to study speciation involving the co-evolution of…

If two species exhibit different nonlinear responses to a single shared resource, and if each species modifies the resource dynamics such that this favors its competitor, they may stably coexist. This coexistence mechanism, known as…

Population-based evolutionary algorithms (EAs) have been widely applied to solve various optimization problems. The question of how the performance of a population-based EA depends on the population size arises naturally. The performance of…

We are interested in modelling Darwinian evolution, resulting from the interplay of phenotypic variation and natural selection through ecological interactions. Our models are rooted in the microscopic, stochastic description of a population…

Because mutations are mostly deleterious, mutation rates should be reduced by natural selection. However, mutations also provide the raw material for adaptation. Therefore, evolutionary theory suggests that the mutation rate must balance…

Predicting evolution of expanding populations is critical to control biological threats such as invasive species and cancer metastasis. Expansion is primarily driven by reproduction and dispersal, but nature abounds with examples of…

How fast does a population evolve from one fitness peak to another? We study the dynamics of evolving, asexually reproducing populations in which a certain number of mutations jointly confer a fitness advantage. We consider the time until a…

Epistatic interactions between residues determine a protein's adaptability and shape its evolutionary trajectory. When a protein experiences a changed environment, it is under strong selection to find a peak in the new fitness landscape. It…

Under constant selection, each trait has a fixed fitness, and small mutation rates allow populations to efficiently exploit the optimal trait. Therefore it is reasonable to expect mutation rates will evolve downwards. However, we find this…

Mutations are typically classified by their effects on the nucleotide sequence and by their size. Here, we argue that if our main aim is to understand the effect of mutations on evolutionary outcomes (such as adaptation or speciation), we…