Related papers: Is modularity the reason why recombination is so u…
Metabolic networks consist of linked functional components, or modules. The mechanism underlying metabolic network modularity is of great interest not only to researchers of basic science but also to those in fields of engineering. Previous…
The adaptation of large asexual populations is hampered by the competition between independently arising beneficial mutations in different individuals, which is known as clonal interference. Fisher and Muller proposed that recombination…
The question as to why most higher organisms reproduce sexually has remained open despite extensive research, and has been called "the queen of problems in evolutionary biology". Theories dating back to Weismann have suggested that the key…
We have analyzed the relations between the mutational pressure, recombination and selection pressure in the bit-string model with sexual reproduction. For specific sets of these parameters we have found three phase transitions with one…
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…
We present a mathematical simplification for the evolutionary dynamics of a heritable trait within a two-sex population. This trait is assumed to control the timing of sex-specific life-history events, such as the age of sexual maturity and…
We consider a population evolving due to mutation, selection and recombination, where selection includes single-locus terms (additive fitness) and two-loci terms (pairwise epistatic fitness). We further consider the problem of inferring…
Human learning is a complex phenomenon requiring flexibility to adapt existing brain function and precision in selecting new neurophysiological activities to drive desired behavior. These two attributes -- flexibility and selection -- must…
We study a mutation-selection model with a fluctuating environment. More precisely, individuals in a large population are assumed to have a modifier locus determining the mutation rate $u \in [0,\vartheta]$ at a second locus with types $v…
Migration is a key mechanism for expansion of communities. In spatially heterogeneous environments, rapidly gaining knowledge about the local environment is key to the evolutionary success of a migrating population. For historical human…
Evolving systems, be it an antibody repertoire in the face of mutating pathogens or a microbial population exposed to varied antibiotics, constantly search for adaptive solutions in time-varying fitness landscapes. Generalists correspond to…
We consider a population of haploid individuals reproducing sexually, i.e. for which the genome of each individual is a random mixture of the genome of its two parents. We assume that initially one individual carries a mutation at one…
We consider a population subdivided into two demes connected by migration in which selection acts in opposite direction. We explore the effects of recombination and migration on the maintenance of multilocus polymorphism, on local…
Modularity is widely used to effectively measure the strength of the disjoint community structure found by community detection algorithms. Several overlapping extensions of modularity were proposed to measure the quality of overlapping…
Genetic stability is a key factor in maintaining, survival and reproduction of biological cells. It relies on many processes, but one of the most important is a {\it homologous recombination}, in which the repair of breaks in…
We study a stochastic model proposed recently in the genetic literature to explain the heterogeneity of cell populations or of gene products. Cells are located in two colonies, whose sizes fluctuate as birth and migration processes in…
Understanding the emergence and sustainability of cooperation is a fundamental problem in evolutionary biology and is frequently studied by the framework of evolutionary game theory. A very powerful mechanism to promote cooperation is…
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…
Much of our understanding of ecological and evolutionary mechanisms derives from analysis of low-dimensional models: with few interacting species, or few axes defining "fitness". It is not always clear to what extent the intuition derived…
Mutualistic interactions, which are beneficial for both interacting species, are recurrently present in ecosystems. Observations of natural systems showed that, if we draw mutualistic relationships as binary links between species, the…