Related papers: Double-replica theory for evolution of genotype-ph…
Darwinian evolution is driven by random mutations, genetic recombination (gene shuffling) and selection that favors genotypes with high fitness. For systems where each genotype can be represented as a bitstring of length $L$, an overview of…
One of the most intriguing questions in evolution is how organisms exhibit suitable phenotypic variation to rapidly adapt in novel selective environments which is crucial for evolvability. Recent work showed that when selective environments…
Genetic interactions can strongly influence the fitness effects of individual mutations, yet the impact of these epistatic interactions on evolutionary dynamics remains poorly understood. Here we investigate the evolutionary role of…
In the field of evolutionary robotics, choosing the correct encoding is very complicated, especially when robots evolve both behaviours and morphologies at the same time. With the objective of improving our understanding of the mapping…
Stochastic phenotype switching has been suggested to play a beneficial role in microbial populations by leading to the division of labour among cells, or ensuring that at least some of the population survives an unexpected change in…
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…
We study the evolution of recombination using a microscopic model developed within the frame of the theory of quantitative traits. Two components of fitness are considered: a static one that describes adaptation to environmental factors not…
Biological evolution depends on the passing down to subsequent generations of genetic information encoding beneficial traits, and on the removal of unfit individuals by a selection mechanism. However, selection acts on phenotypes, and is…
How adaptive evolution to one environmental stress improves or suppresses adaptation to another is an important problem in evolutionary biology. For instance, in microbiology, the evolution of bacteria to be resistant to different…
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…
The concept of fitness is central to evolution, but it quantifies only the expected number of offspring an individual will produce. The actual number of offspring is also subject to noise, arising from environmental or demographic…
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…
In complex ecosystems such as microbial communities, there is constant ecological and evolutionary feedback between the residing species and the environment occurring on concurrent timescales. Species respond and adapt to their surroundings…
Both external environmental selection and internal lower-level evolution are essential for an integral picture of evolution. This paper proposes that the division of internal evolution into DNA/RNA pattern formation (genotype) and protein…
Genotype-phenotype (GP) maps specify how the random mutations that change genotypes generate variation by altering phenotypes, which, in turn, can trigger selection. Many GP maps share the following general properties: 1) The number of…
Dramatic rise of mutators has been found to accompany adaptation of bacteria in response to many kinds of stress. Two views on the evolutionary origin of this phenomenon emerged: the pleiotropic hypothesis positing that it is a byproduct of…
We study a mathematical model describing the growth process of a population structured by age and a phenotypical trait, subject to aging, competition between individuals and rare mutations. Our goals are to describe the asymptotic behaviour…
Phenotype-switching with and without sensing environment is a ubiquitous strategy of organisms to survive in fluctuating environment. Fitness of a population of organisms with phenotype-switching may be constrained and restricted by hidden…
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…
Replication helps ensure that a genotype-phenotype association observed in a genome-wide association (GWA) study represents a credible association and is not a chance finding or an artifact due to uncontrolled biases. We discuss…