Related papers: Mutation rate variability as a driving force in ad…
We study a general setting of neutral evolution in which the population is of finite, constant size and can have spatial structure. Mutation leads to different genetic types ("traits"), which can be discrete or continuous. Under minimal…
We consider a stochastic individual-based model of adaptive dynamics for an asexually reproducing population with mutation. Biologically motivated by the influence of seasons or the variation of drug concentration during medical treatment,…
Resistance to chemotherapies, particularly to anticancer treatments, is an increasing medical concern. Among the many mechanisms at work in cancers, one of the most important is the selection of tumor cells expressing resistance genes or…
Evolution on neutral networks of genotypes has been found in models to concentrate on genotypes with high mutational robustness, to a degree determined by the topology of the network. Here analysis is generalized beyond neutral networks to…
In many biological processes, the size of a population changes stochastically with time, and recent work in the context of cancer and bacterial growth have focused on the situation when the mean population size grows exponentially. Here,…
Recent microbial experiments suggest that enhanced genetic drift at the frontier of a two-dimensional range expansion can cause genetic sectoring patterns with fractal domain boundaries. Here, we propose and analyze a simple model of…
Vector-borne diseases often infect multiple host species, increasing the likelihood of disease persistence due to the presence of multiple reservoirs. Vector biting patterns and feeding preferences can shift in response to selective…
Since steep declines in a population's size also typically alter its composition, population bottlenecks are considered highly important for evolution. However, despite such significance, the mechanisms governing the impact of a given…
Mutational robustness quantifies the effect of random mutations on fitness. When mutational robustness is high, most mutations do not change fitness or have only a minor effect on it. From the point of view of fitness landscapes, robust…
Bacterial populations often have complex spatial structures, which can impact their evolution. Here, we study how spatial structure affects the evolution of antibiotic resistance in a bacterial population. We consider a minimal model of…
Our understanding of evolution is shaped strongly by how we conceive of its fundamental causes. In the original Modern Synthesis, evolution was defined as a process of shifting the frequencies of available alleles at many loci affecting a…
The environment has a strong influence on a population's evolutionary dynamics. Driven by both intrinsic and external factors, the environment is subject to continual change in nature. To capture an ever-changing environment, we consider a…
Within the framework of population genetics we consider the evolution of an asexual haploid population under the effect of a rapidly varying natural selection (microevolution). We focus on the case in which the environment exerting…
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…
Bacterial growth environment strongly influences the efficacy of antibiotic treatment, with slow growth often being associated with decreased susceptibility. Yet in many cases the connection between antibiotic susceptibility and pathogen…
Evolution is a dynamic process. The two classical forces of evolution are mutation and selection. Assuming small mutation rates, evolution can be predicted based solely on the fitness differences between phenotypes. Predicting an…
Cells generally change their internal state to adapt to an environmental change, and accordingly evolve in response to the new conditions. This process involves phenotypic changes that occur over several different time scales, ranging from…
The spreading of evolutionary novelties across populations is the central element of adaptation. Unless population are well-mixed (like bacteria in a shaken test tube), the spreading dynamics not only depends on fitness differences but also…
We investigate a selection-mutation model for the dynamics of technological innovation,a special case of reaction-diffusion equations. Although mutations are assumed to increase the variety of technologies, not their average success…
Understanding how a diversity of plants in agroecosystems affects the adaptation of pathogens in a key issue in agroecology. We analyze PDE systems describing the dynamics of adaptation of two phenotypically structured populations, under…