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The control of gene expression involves complex mechanisms that show large variation in design. For example, genes can be turned on either by the binding of an activator (positive control) or the unbinding of a repressor (negative control).…
Although many phenotypic traits are determined by a large number of genetic variants, how a polygenic trait adapts in response to the changes in the environment is still poorly understood. Here we study the adaptation dynamics of a…
George Williams defined an evolutionary unit as hereditary information for which the selection bias between competing units dominates the informational decay caused by imperfect transmission. In this article, I extend Williams' approach to…
Shannon information has, in the past, been applied to quantify the genetic diversity of many natural populations. Here, we apply the Shannon concept to consecutive generations of alleles as they evolve over time. We suppose a genetic system…
The antibody repertoire of each individual is continuously updated by the evolutionary process of B cell receptor mutation and selection. It has recently become possible to gain detailed information concerning this process through…
Recent studies of in vitro evolution of DNA via protein binding indicate that the evolution behavior is qualitatively different in different parameter regimes. I here present a general theory that is valid for a wide range of parameters,…
Our understanding of evolution is shaped strongly by how we conceive of its fundamental causes. In the original Modern Synthesis, evolution was defined as a process of shifting the frequencies of available alleles at many loci affecting a…
Social networks exhibit strikingly systematic patterns across a wide range of human contexts. While genetic variation accounts for a significant portion of the variation in many complex social behaviors, the heritability of egocentric…
We propose a simple model for genetic adaptation to a changing environment, describing a fitness landscape characterized by two maxima. One is associated with "specialist" individuals that are adapted to the environment; this maximum moves…
Phenotypes of individuals in a population of organisms are not fixed. Phenotypic fluctuations, which describe temporal variation of the phenotype of an individual or individual-to-individual variation across a population, are present in…
A decent number of lower bounds for non-elitist population-based evolutionary algorithms has been shown by now. Most of them are technically demanding due to the (hard to avoid) use of negative drift theorems -- general results which…
One of the main properties of biological systems is modularity, which manifests itself at all levels of their organization, starting with the level of molecular genetics, ending with the level of whole organisms and their communities. In a…
Neutral evolution assumes that there are no selective forces distinguishing different variants in a population. Despite this striking assumption, many recent studies have sought to assess whether neutrality can provide a good description of…
We consider a population of N individuals, whose dynamics through time is represented by a biparental Moran model with two types: an advantaged type and a disadvantaged type. The advantage is due to a mutation, transmitted in a Mendelian…
We study the spread of a novel state in a network, in the presence of an exogenous control. The considered controlled evolutionary dynamics is a non-homogeneous Markov process that describes the evolution of the states of all nodes in the…
One of the problems in applying Genetic Algorithm is that there is some situation where the evolutionary process converges too fast to a solution which causes it to be trapped in local optima. To overcome this problem, a proper diversity in…
The evolution and function of imitation have always been placed within the confines of animal learning and associated with its crucial role in cultural transmission and cultural evolution. Can imitation evolve as a form of phenotypic…
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…
Arthur's (1988) model for competing technologies is discussed from the perspective of evolution theory. Using Arthur's own model for the simulation, we show that 'lock-ins' can be suppressed by adding reflexivity or uncertainty on the side…
This paper focuses on the maximum speed at which biological evolution can occur. I derive inequalities that limit the rate of evolutionary processes driven by natural selection, mutations, or genetic drift. These \emph{rate limits} link the…