Related papers: Gene networks accelerate evolution by fitness land…
Robustness to genetic or environmental disturbances is often considered as a key property of living systems. Yet, in spite of being discussed since the 1950s, how robustness emerges from the complexity of genetic architectures and how it…
The mutation-selection mechanism of Darwinian evolution gives rise not only to adaptation to environmental conditions but also to the enhancement of robustness against mutations. When two or more phenotypes have the same fitness value, the…
Segmentation in arthropod embryogenesis represents a well-known example of body plan diversity. Striped patterns of gene expression that lead to the future body segments appear simultaneously or sequentially in long and short germ-band…
Multi-task reinforcement learning employs a single policy to complete various tasks, aiming to develop an agent with generalizability across different scenarios. Given the shared characteristics of tasks, the agent's learning efficiency can…
A quasispecies is a set of interrelated genotypes that have reached a situation of equilibrium while evolving according to the usual Darwinian principles of selection and mutation. Quasispecies studies invariably assume that it is possible…
Reconstruction of gene regulatory networks is the process of identifying gene dependency from gene expression profile through some computation techniques. In our human body, though all cells pose similar genetic material but the activation…
Darwinian evolution can be illustrated as an uphill walk in a landscape, where the surface consists of genotypes, the height coordinates represent fitness, and each step corresponds to a point mutation. Epistasis, roughly defined as the…
The factors that influence genetic architecture shape the structure of the fitness landscape, and therefore play a large role in the evolutionary dynamics. Here the NK model is used to investigate how epistasis and pleiotropy -- key…
The significant role of epigenetic mechanisms within natural systems has become increasingly clear. This paper uses a recently presented abstract, tunable Boolean genetic regulatory network model to explore aspects of epigenetics. It is…
Phenotypic fluctuations and plasticity can generally affect the course of evolution, a process known as the Baldwin effect. Several studies have recast this effect and claimed that phenotypic plasticity acceler- ates evolutionary rate (the…
This is an introductory review of deterministic mutation-selection models for asexual populations (i.e., quasispecies theory) and related topics. First, the basic concepts of fitness, mutations, and sequence space are introduced. Different…
We discuss how to use a Genetic Regulatory Network as an evolutionary representation to solve a typical GP reinforcement problem, the pole balancing. The network is a modified version of an Artificial Regulatory Network proposed a few years…
The fitness landscape metaphor plays a central role on the modeling of optimizing principles in many research fields, ranging from evolutionary biology, where it was first introduced, to management research. Here we consider the ensemble of…
We propose a simple model for genetic adaptation to a changing environment, describing a fitness landscape characterized by two maxima. One is associated with "specialist" individuals that are adapted to the environment; this maximum moves…
Modelling genetic phenomena affecting biological traits is important for the development of agriculture as it allows breeders to predict the potential of breeding for certain traits. One such phenomenon is heterosis or hybrid vigor:…
Genetic regulatory networks enable cells to respond to the changes in internal and external conditions by dynamically coordinating their gene expression profiles. Our ability to make quantitative measurements in these biochemical circuits…
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…
Biological genotypes do not code directly for phenotypes; developmental physiology is the control layer that separates genomes from capacities ascertained by selection. A key aspect is competency, as cells are not a passive material but…
We interpret the Moran model of natural selection and drift as an algorithm for learning features of a simplified fitness landscape, specifically genotype superiority. This algorithm's efficiency in extracting these characteristics is…
I consider a class of fitness landscapes, in which the fitness is a function of a finite number of phenotypic "traits", which are themselves linear functions of the genotype. I show that the stationary trait distribution in such a landscape…