Related papers: Direction and Constraint in Phenotypic Evolution: …
Possibility to establish macroscopic phenomenological theory for biological systems, akin to the akin to the well-established framework of thermodynamics, is briefly reviewed. We introduce the concept of an evolutionary fluctuation-response…
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 characterization of plasticity, robustness, and evolvability, an important issue in biology, is studied in terms of phenotypic fluctuations. By numerically evolving gene regulatory networks, the proportionality between the phenotypic…
In general, cellular phenotypes, as measured by concentrations of cellular components, involve large degrees of freedom. However, recent measurement has demonstrated that phenotypic changes resulting from adaptation and evolution in…
Life systems are complex and hierarchical, with diverse components at different scales, yet they sustain themselves, grow, and evolve over time. How can a theory of such complex biological states be developed? Here we note that for a…
Phenotypes of individuals in a population of organisms are not fixed. Phenotypic fluctuations, which describe temporal variation of the phenotype of an individual or individual-to-individual variation across a population, are present in…
The evolution of high-dimensional phenotypes is investigated using a statistical physics model consists of interacting spins, in which genotypes, phenotypes, and environments are represented by spin configurations, interaction matrices, and…
Phenotype of biological systems needs to be robust against mutation in order to sustain themselves between generations. On the other hand, phenotype of an individual also needs to be robust against fluctuations of both internal and external…
Living species, ranging from bacteria to animals, exist in environmental conditions that exhibit spatial and temporal heterogeneity which requires them to adapt. Risk-spreading through spontaneous phenotypic variations is a known concept in…
Many biological systems regulate phenotypic heterogeneity as a fitness-maximising strategy in uncertain and dynamic environments. Analysis of such strategies is typically confined both to a discrete set of environmental conditions, and to a…
Constraints on changes in expression levels across all cell components imposed by the steady growth of cells have recently been discussed both experimentally and theoretically. By assuming a small environmental perturbation and considering…
Molecular phenotypes are important links between genomic information and organismic functions, fitness, and evolution. Complex phenotypes, which are also called quantitative traits, often depend on multiple genomic loci. Their evolution…
Biological functions are generated as a result of developmental dynamics that form phenotypes governed by genotypes. The dynamical system for development is shaped through genetic evolution following natural selection based on the fitness…
Developmental trajectories are known to be canalized, or robust to both environmental and genetic perturbations. However, even when these trajectories are decanalized by an environmental perturbation outside of the range of conditions to…
We study macroevolutionary dynamics by extending microevolutionary competition models to long time scales. It has been shown that for a general class of competition models, gradual evolutionary change in continuous phenotypes (evolutionary…
Biological systems must be robust for stable function against perturbations, but robustness alone is not sufficient. The ability to switch between appropriate states (phenotypes) in response to different conditions is essential for…
Developmental bias plays a major role in phenotypic evolution. Some researchers have argued that phenotypes, regulated by development, can only evolve along restricted trajectory under certain scenarios, such as the case for mammalian molar…
A simple model of macroevolution is proposed exhibiting both the property of punctuated equilibrium and the dynamics of potentialities for different species to evolve towards increasingly higher complexity. It is based on the phenomenon of…
Plasticity-led evolution is a form of evolution where a change in the environment induces novel traits via phenotypic plasticity, after which the novel traits are genetically accommodated over generations under the novel environment. This…
How can a microorganism adapt to a variety of environmental conditions despite there exists a limited number of signal transduction machineries? We show that for any growing cells whose gene expression is under stochastic fluctuations,…