Related papers: Recombination and peak jumping
A quasispecies evolving on a fitness landscape with a single peak of fluctuating height is studied. In the approximation that back mutations can be ignored, the rate equations can be solved analytically. It is shown that the error threshold…
Natural selection acts on traits at different scales, often with opposing consequences. This article identifies the particular forces that act at each scale and how those forces combine to determine the overall evolutionary outcome. A…
Under the effects of strong genetic drift, it is highly probable to observe gene fixation or loss in a population, shown by divergent probability density functions, or infinite adaptive peaks on a landscape. It is then interesting to ask…
In the human genomes, recombination frequency between homologous chromosomes during meiosis is highly correlated with their physical length while it differs significantly when their coding density is considered. Furthermore, it has been…
We introduce a generalization of the parallel, or Crow-Kimura, and Eigen models of molecular evolution to represent the exchange of genetic information between individuals in a population. We study the effect of different schemes of genetic…
At any moment in time, evolution is faced with a formidable challenge: refining the already highly optimised design of biological species, a feat accomplished through all preceding generations. In such a scenario, the impact of random…
Evolution depends on the possibility of successfully exploring fitness landscapes via mutation and recombination. With these search procedures, exploration is difficult in "rugged" fitness landscapes, where small mutations can drastically…
In an attempt to explain the uniqueness of the coding mechanism of living cells as contrasted with multi-species structure of ecosystems we examine two models of individuals with some replicative properties. In the first model the system…
The capacity to resist attacks from the environment is crucial to the survival of all organisms. We quantitatively analyze the susceptibility of protein interaction networks of numerous organisms to random and malicious attacks. We find for…
When mutation rates are low, natural selection remains effective, and increasing the mutation rate can give rise to an increase in adaptation rate. When mutation rates are high to begin with, however, increasing the mutation rate may have a…
Due to stochastic fluctuations arising from finite population size, known as genetic drift, the ability of a population to explore a rugged fitness landscape depends on its size. In the weak mutation regime, while the mean steady-state…
Large populations may contain numerous simultaneously segregating polymorphisms subject to natural selection. Since selection acts on individuals whose fitness depends on many loci, different loci affect each other's dynamics. This leads to…
Population expansions trigger many biomedical and ecological transitions, from tumor growth to invasions of non-native species. Although population spreading often selects for more invasive phenotypes, we show that this outcome is far from…
The dynamics of recombination in genetics leads to an interesting nonlinear differential equation, which has a natural generalization to a measure valued version. The latter can be solved explicitly under rather general circumstances. It…
We study the statistical mechanics of a model describing the coevolution of species interacting in a random way. We find that at high competition replica symmetry is broken. We solve the model in the approximation of one step replica…
Why sex evolved and it prevails in nature remains one of the great puzzles of evolution. Most biologists would explain that it promotes genetic variability, however this explanation suffers from several difficulties. What advantages might…
A fragmented landscape reduces the impact of interspecies connectivity, leading to higher diversity levels than otherwise possible in a connected landscape. Reconnecting a previously fragmented landscape initiates an extinction event,…
Recombination is introduced into Eigen's theory of quasispecies evolution. Comparing numerical simulations of the rate equations in the non-recombining and recombining cases show that recombination has a strong effect on the error threshold…
Positive selection distorts the structure of genealogies and hence alters patterns of genetic variation within a population. Most analyses of these distortions focus on the signatures of hitchhiking due to hard or soft selective sweeps at a…
Motivation: Genome rearrangement plays an important role in evolutionary biology and has profound impacts on phenotype in organisms ranging from microbes to humans. The mechanisms for genome rearrangement events remain unclear. Lots of…