Related papers: Recombination and peak jumping
Recombination plays a fundamental role in meiosis, ensuring the proper segregation of chromosomes and contributing to genetic diversity by generating novel combinations of alleles. Using data derived from directUtoUconsumer genetic testing,…
Ecosystems are formed by networks of species and their interactions. Traditional models of such interactions assume a constant interaction strength between a given pair of species. However, there is often significant trait variation among…
Is evolution always gradual or can it make leaps? We examine a mathematical model of an evolutionary process on a fitness landscape and obtain analytic solutions for the probability of multi-mutation leaps, that is, several mutations…
Expression level is known to be a strong determinant of a protein's rate of evolution. But the converse can also be true: evolutionary dynamics can affect expression levels of proteins. Having implications in both directions fosters the…
The statistical properties of an ecosystem composed of species interacting via pairwise, random interactions and deterministic, concentration limiting self-interaction are studied analytically with tools of equilibrium statistical mechanics…
We study the multi-species replicator model with linear fitness and random fitness matrices of various classes. By means of numerical resolution of the replicator equations, we determine the survival probability of a species in terms of its…
Sewall Wright's adaptive landscape metaphor penetrates a significant part of evolutionary thinking. Supplemented with Fisher's fundamental theorem of natural selection and Kimura's maximum principle, it provides a unifying and intuitive…
We show that the protein-protein interaction networks can be surprisingly well described by a very simple evolution model of duplication and divergence. The model exhibits a remarkably rich behavior depending on a single parameter, the…
Biological organisms have to cope with stochastic variations in both the external environment and the internal population dynamics. Theoretical studies and laboratory experiments suggest that population diversification could be an effective…
One strategy for winning a coevolutionary struggle is to evolve rapidly. Most of the literature on host-pathogen coevolution focuses on this phenomenon, and looks for consequent evidence of coevolutionary arms races. An alternative…
We identify the genetic signature of a selective sweep in a population described by a birth-and-death process with density dependent competition. We study the limit behaviour for large K, where K scales the population size. We focus on two…
Emergence is a phenomenon taken for granted in science but also still not well understood. We have developed a model of artificial genetic evolution intended to allow for emergence on genetic, population and social levels. We present the…
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…
According to the competitive exclusion principle, in a finite ecosystem, extinction occurs naturally when two or more species compete for the same resources. An important question that arises is: when coexistence is not possible, which…
From the perfect radial symmetries of radiolarian mineral skeletons to the broken symmetry of homochirality, the logic of Nature's regularities has fascinated scientists for centuries. Some of Nature's symmetries are clearly visible in…
A theoretical and experimental analysis is made of the effects of self-adaptation in a simple evolving system. Specifically, we consider the effects of coding the mutation and crossover probabilities of a genetic algorithm evolving in…
Population genetics struggles to model extinction; standard models track the relative rather than absolute fitness of genotypes, while the exceptions describe only the short-term transition from imminent doom to evolutionary rescue. But…
How fast does a population evolve from one fitness peak to another? We study the dynamics of evolving, asexually reproducing populations in which a certain number of mutations jointly confer a fitness advantage. We consider the time until a…
The reconstruction of a central tendency `species tree' from a large number of conflicting gene trees is a central problem in systematic biology. Moreover, it becomes particularly problematic when taxon coverage is patchy, so that not all…
Much of contemporary systems biology owes its success to the abstraction of a network, the idea that diverse kinds of molecular, cellular, and organismal species and interactions can be modeled as relational nodes and edges in a graph of…