Related papers: Evolutionary accessibility of mutational pathways
Many studies have analyzed how variability in reproductive success affects fitness. However, each study tends to focus on a particular problem, leaving unclear the overall structure of variability in populations. This fractured conceptual…
Adaptive dynamics is a widely used framework for modeling long-term evolution of continuous phenotypes. It is based on invasion fitness functions, which determine selection gradients and the canonical equation of adaptive dynamics. Even…
Evolutionary algorithms, inspired by natural evolution, aim to optimize difficult objective functions without computing derivatives. Here we detail the relationship between population genetics and evolutionary optimization and formulate a…
The enormous size and complexity of genotypic sequence space frequently requires consideration of coarse-grained sequences in empirical models. We develop scaling relations to quantify the effect of this coarse-graining on properties of…
While Neutral Theory famously describes the number of discrete genetic differences in populations, we consider the number of genetic backgrounds under which such differences are observed - setting limits to the generalizability of their…
Crossover and mutation are the two main operators that lead to new solutions in evolutionary approaches. In this article, a new method of performing the crossover phase is presented. The problem of choice is evolutionary decision tree…
Natural genomes sometimes encode two different proteins in staggered reading frames of the same DNA sequence. Despite the prevalence of these 'overlapping genes' across the tree of life, it remains unknown whether arbitrary protein pairs…
Understanding how a diversity of plants in agroecosystems affects the adaptation of pathogens in a key issue in agroecology. We analyze PDE systems describing the dynamics of adaptation of two phenotypically structured populations, under…
We consider the optimal dynamics in the infinite population evolution models with general symmetric fitness landscape. The search of optimal evolution trajectories are complicated due to sharp transitions (like shock waves) in evolution…
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…
In modular robotics, modules can be reconfigured to change the morphology of the robot, making it able to adapt for specific tasks. However, optimizing both the body and control is a difficult challenge due to the intricate relationship…
Horizontal gene transfer is an important factor in bacterial evolution that can act across species boundaries. Yet, we know little about rate and genomic targets of cross-lineage gene transfer, and about its effects on the recipient…
BACKGROUND: An important question is whether evolution favors properties such as mutational robustness or evolvability that do not directly benefit any individual, but can influence the course of future evolution. Functionally similar…
The basic mechanics of evolution have been understood since Darwin. But debate continues over whether macroevolutionary phenomena are driven primary by the fitness structure of genotype space or by ecological interaction. In this paper we…
Genetic fitness optimization using small populations or small population updates across generations generally suffers from randomly diverging evolutions. We propose a notion of highly probable fitness optimization through feasible…
We investigate an simple evolutionary game of sequences and demonstrate on this example the structure of fitness landscapes in discrete problems. We show the smoothing action of the genotype-phenotype mapping which still makes it feasible…
Genotype-phenotype (GP) maps specify how the random mutations that change genotypes generate variation by altering phenotypes, which, in turn, can trigger selection. Many GP maps share the following general properties: 1) The number of…
We investigate the evolution of populations of random Boolean networks under selection for robustness of the dynamics with respect to the perturbation of the state of a node. The fitness landscape contains a huge plateau of maximum fitness…
We analytically study the dynamics of evolving populations that exhibit metastability on the level of phenotype or fitness. In constant selective environments, such metastable behavior is caused by two qualitatively different mechanisms.…
An elastic spring network is an example of evolvable matter. It can be pruned to couple separated pairs of nodes so that when a strain is applied to one of them, the other responds either in-phase or out-of-phase. This produces two pruned…