Related papers: Genomic mutation rates that neutralize adaptive ev…

We consider the accumulation of beneficial and deleterious mutations in large asexual populations. The rate of adaptation is affected by the total mutation rate, proportion of beneficial mutations and population size $N$. We show that…

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…

Linked beneficial and deleterious mutations are known to decrease the fixation probability of a favorable mutation in large asexual populations. While the hindering effect of strongly deleterious mutations on adaptive evolution has been…

Because mutations are mostly deleterious, mutation rates should be reduced by natural selection. However, mutations also provide the raw material for adaptation. Therefore, evolutionary theory suggests that the mutation rate must balance…

In large populations, multiple beneficial mutations may be simultaneously spreading. In asexual populations, these mutations must either arise on the same background or compete against each other. In sexual populations, recombination can…

Most new mutations are deleterious and are eventually eliminated by natural selection. But in an adapting population, the rapid amplification of beneficial mutations can hinder the removal of deleterious variants in nearby regions of the…

Mutation has traditionally been regarded as an important operator in evolutionary algorithms. In particular, there have been many experimental studies which showed the effectiveness of adapting mutation rates for various static optimization…

Although mutations drive the evolutionary process, the rates at which the mutations occur are themselves subject to evolutionary forces. Our purpose here is to understand the role of selection and random genetic drift in the evolution of…

Adaptation often involves the acquisition of a large number of genomic changes which arise as mutations in single individuals. In asexual populations, combinations of mutations can fix only when they arise in the same lineage, but for…

In unicellular organisms such as bacteria and in most viruses, mutations mainly occur during reproduction. Thus, genotypes with a high birth rate should have a higher mutation rate. However, standard models of asexual adaptation such as the…

In large asexual populations, beneficial mutations have to compete with each other for fixation. Here, I derive explicit analytic expressions for the rate of substitution and the mean beneficial effect of fixed mutations, under the…

The theory of evolution by natural selection cannot be used to evaluate the truth value of the following proposition: Through evolution, there exists at least one species that can adapt to any one given environment. To address this issue,…

The inheritance of characteristics induced by the environment has often been opposed to the theory of evolution by natural selection. Yet, while evolution by natural selection requires new heritable traits to be produced and transmitted, it…

Stronger selection implies faster evolution---that is, the greater the force, the faster the change. This apparently self-evident proposition, however, is derived under the assumption that genetic variation within a population is primarily…

The adaptation rate in theoretical models of biological evolution increases with the mutation rate but only to a point when mutations into lethal states cause extinction. One would expect that removing such states should be beneficial for…

A mutator is an allele that increases the mutation rate throughout the genome by disrupting some aspect of DNA replication or repair. Mutators that increase the mutation rate by the order of 100 fold have been observed to spontaneously…

Evolution occurs in populations of reproducing individuals. It is well known that population structure can affect evolutionary dynamics. Traditionally, natural selection is studied between mutants that differ in reproductive rate, but are…

Adaptation is a central topic in theoretical biology, of practical importance for analyzing drug resistance mutations. Several authors have used arguments based on extreme value theory in their work on adaptation. There are complications…

Weak purifying selection, acting on many linked mutations, may play a major role in shaping patterns of molecular evolution in natural populations. Yet efforts to infer these effects from DNA sequence data are limited by our incomplete…

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.…