Related papers: The evolution of genetic architectures underlying …
Several populational networks present complex topologies when implemented in evolutionary algorithms. A common feature of these topologies is the emergence of a power law. Power law behavior with different scaling factors can also be…
This paper explores the genotype-phenotype relationship. It outlines conditions under which the dependence of a quantitative trait on the genome might be predictable, based on measurement of a limited subset of genotypes. It uses the theory…
We consider a trait-structured population subject to mutation, birth and competition of logistic type, where the number of coexisting types may fluctuate. Applying a limit of rare mutations to this population while keeping the population…
Selection, mutation and random drift affect the dynamics of allele frequencies and consequently of quantitative traits. While the macroscopic dynamics of quantitative traits can be measured, the underlying allele frequencies are typically…
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
Background and Aims: Prediction of phenotypic traits from new genotypes under untested environmental conditions is crucial to build simulations of breeding strategies to improve target traits. Although the plant response to environmental…
Adaptation in response to selection on polygenic phenotypes may occur via subtle allele frequencies shifts at many loci. Current population genomic techniques are not well posed to identify such signals. In the past decade, detailed…
Exploring the genetic basis of heritable traits remains one of the central challenges in biomedical research. In simple cases, single polymorphic loci explain a significant fraction of the phenotype variability. However, many traits of…
Genetic diversity is central to the process of evolution. Both natural selection and random genetic drift are influenced by the level of genetic diversity of a population; selection acts on diversity while drift samples from it. At a given…
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…
Cryptic genetic sequences have attenuated effects on phenotypes. In the classic view, relaxed selection allows cryptic genetic diversity to build up across individuals in a population, providing alleles that may later contribute to…
Identifying drivers of complex traits from the noisy signals of genetic variation obtained from high throughput genome sequencing technologies is a central challenge faced by human geneticists today. We hypothesize that the variants…
Studies of the genetic loci that contribute to variation in gene expression frequently identify loci with broad effect on gene expression: expression quantitative trait locus (eQTL) hotspots. We describe a set of exploratory graphical…
Many experimental and field studies have shown that adaptation can occur very rapidly. Two qualitatively different modes of fast adaptation have been proposed: selective sweeps wherein large shifts in the allele frequencies occur at a few…
Expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) mapping constitutes a challenging problem due to, among other reasons, the high-dimensional multivariate nature of gene-expression traits. Next to the expression heterogeneity produced by…
Quantitative plant disease resistance is believed to be more durable than qualitative resistance, since it exerts less selective pressure on the pathogens. However, the process of progressive pathogen adaptation to quantitative resistance…
Mutations in a microbial population can increase the frequency of a genotype not only by increasing its exponential growth rate, but also by decreasing its lag time or adjusting the yield (resource efficiency). The contribution of multiple…
Evolutionary dynamics is often viewed as a subtle process of change accumulation that causes a divergence among organisms and their genomes. However, this interpretation is an inheritance of a gradualistic view that has been challenged at…
Near the beginning of the century, Wright and Fisher devised an elegant, mathematically tractable model of gene reproduction and replacement that laid the foundation for contemporary population genetics. The Wright-Fisher model and its…
Understanding how stochastic and non-linear deterministic processes interact is a major challenge in population dynamics theory. After a short review, we introduce a stochastic individual-centered particle model to describe the evolution in…