Related papers: An Illustrated Introduction to the Basic Biologica…
Prion and prion-like molecules are a type of self replicating aggregate protein that have been implicated in a variety of neurodegenerative diseases. Over recent decades the molecular dynamics of prions have been characterized both…
A new evolutionary solution to Prisoner Dilemma situations is proposed in this paper. A specific genetic code may have different phenotypes, meaning different strategies for different individuals carrying that gene. This means that, under…
The mechanisms by which adaptive phenotypes spread within an evolving population after their emergence are understood fairly well. Much less is known about the factors that influence the evolutionary accessibility of such phenotypes, a…
Evolution by natural selection can be seen an algorithm for generating creative solutions to difficult problems. More precisely, evolution by natural selection is a class of algorithms that share a set of properties. The question we address…
The mapping between biological genotypes and phenotypes is central to the study of biological evolution. Here we introduce a rich, intuitive, and biologically realistic genotype-phenotype (GP) map, that serves as a model of self-assembling…
We present a strong theoretical foundation that frames a well-defined family of outer-totalistic network automaton models as a topological generalisation of binary outer-totalistic cellular automata, of which the Game of Life is one notable…
Understanding how genes influence phenotype across species is a fundamental challenge in genetic engineering, which will facilitate advances in various fields such as crop breeding, conservation biology, and personalized medicine. However,…
Large sets of genotypes give rise to the same phenotype because phenotypic expression is highly redundant. Accordingly, a population can accept mutations without altering its phenotype, as long as thegenotype mutates into another one on the…
We model evolution of plants in a world, made up of different locations, with multiple environments (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive subsets of locations). Each environment (landmass) has temperature, rainfall, and other…
We consider evolution of a large population, where fitness of each organism is defined by many phenotypical traits. These traits result from expression of many genes. We propose a new model of gene regulation, where gene expression is…
Natural selection favors the more successful individuals. This is the elementary premise that pervades common models of evolution. Under extreme conditions, however, the process may no longer be probabilistic. Those that meet certain…
We demonstrate with a thought experiment that fitness-based population dynamical approaches to evolution are not able to make quantitative, falsifiable predictions about the long-term behavior of evolutionary systems. A key characteristic…
The exploration of vast genotype spaces poses fundamental challenges for evolving populations. As the number of genotypes encoding viable phenotypes grows exponentially with genome length, populations can only explore a tiny fraction of…
How adaptive evolution to one environmental stress improves or suppresses adaptation to another is an important problem in evolutionary biology. For instance, in microbiology, the evolution of bacteria to be resistant to different…
A dynamical theory for the evolution of the genetic code is presented, which accounts for its universality and optimality. The central concept is that a variety of collective, but non-Darwinian, mechanisms likely to be present in early…
We consider the dynamics imposed by natural selection on the populations of two competing, sexually reproducing, haploid species. In this setting, the fitness of any genome varies over time due to the changing population mix of the…
Time evolution of number of species (genera, families, and others), population of them, and size distribution of present ones and life times are studied in terms of a new model, where population of each genetic taxon increases by a (random)…
The premise of genetic analysis is that a causal link exists between phenotypic and allelic variation. Yet it has long been documented that mutant phenotypes are not a simple result of a single DNA lesion, but rather are due to interactions…
Species coexistence is one of the central themes in modern ecology. Coexistence is a prerequisite of biological diversity. However, the question arises how biodiversity can be reconciled with the statement of competition theory, which…
The origin of life must have been preceded by Darwin-like evolutionary dynamics that could propagate it. How did that adaptive dynamics arise? And from what prebiotic molecules? Using evolutionary invasion analysis, we develop a universal…