Related papers: Slow evolution of vertebrates with large genomes
Evolution in changing environments is an important, but little studied aspect of the theory of evolution. The idea of adaptive walks in fitness landscapes has triggered a vast amount of research and has led to many important insights about…
The universal genetic code presents a fundamental paradox in molecular biology. Recent advances in synthetic biology have demonstrated that the code is remarkably flexible--organisms can survive with 61 codons instead of 64, natural…
The networks of predator-prey interactions in ecological systems are remarkably complex, but nevertheless surprisingly stable in terms of long term persistence of the system as a whole. In order to understand the mechanism driving the…
We have used the Monte Carlo based computer models to show that selection pressure could affect the distribution of recombination hotspots along the chromosome. Close to critical crossover rate, where genomes may switch between the…
Human populations have a complex history of introgression and of changing population size. Human genetic variation has been affected by both these processes, so that inference of past population size depends upon the pattern of gene flow…
Adaptation to changing environments is a hallmark of biological systems. Diversity in traits is necessary for adaptation and can influence the survival of a population faced with novelty. In habitats that remain stable over many…
Research in quantitative evolutionary genomics and systems biology led to the discovery of several universal regularities connecting genomic and molecular phenomic variables. These universals include the log-normal distribution of the…
One of the major characteristics of living organisms is metabolic rate, which is the amount of energy produced per unit of time. When the mass of organisms increases, the metabolic rate also increases (usually as a power function of mass),…
A fundamental question for evolutionary biology is why rates of evolution vary dramatically between proteins. Perhaps surprisingly, it is controversial how much a protein's functional importance affects its rate of evolution. In most…
Understanding the evolution of scaling relations between the observable properties of clusters and their total mass is key to realizing their potential as cosmological probes. In this study, we investigate whether the evolution of cluster…
In subdivided populations, migration acts together with selection and genetic drift and determines their evolution. Building up on a recently proposed method, which hinges on the emergence of a time scale separation between local and global…
The evolution of microbial and viral organisms often generates clonal interference, a mode of competition between genetic clades within a population. In this paper, we show that interference strongly constrains the genetic and phenotypic…
An ongoing debate in evolutionary biology is whether phenotypic change occurs predominantly around the time of speciation or whether it instead accumulates gradually over time. In this work I propose a general framework incorporating both…
Nearly neutral theory predicts that evolutionary processes will differ in small populations compared to large populations, a key point of concern for endangered species. The nearly-neutral threshold, the span of neutral variation, and the…
We study in detail a recently proposed simple discrete model for evolution on smooth landscapes. An asymptotic solution of this model for long times is constructed. We find that the dynamics of the population are governed by correlation…
We combine momentum from machine learning with evolutionary dynamics, where momentum can be viewed as a simple mechanism of intergenerational memory. Using information divergences as Lyapunov functions, we show that momentum accelerates the…
We study the effect of correlations in generation times on the dynamics of population growth of microorganisms. We show that any non-zero correlation that is due to cell-size regulation, no matter how small, induces long-term oscillations…
We study the probabilities of evolution based on random mutations and natural selection. We conclude that evolution to multicellular eukaryots, or even prokaryots, is unlikely to be the result of only random mutations. Complex organisms…
Sex chromosomes have independently evolved in species with separate sexes in most lineages across the tree of life. However, the well-accepted canonical model of sex chromosome evolution is not universally supported. There is no single…
Natural selection explains how life has evolved over millions of years from more primitive forms. The speed at which this happens, however, has sometimes defied formal explanations when based on random (uniformly distributed) mutations.…