Related papers: Selective advantage of topological disorder in bio…
We compared the properties of the error threshold transition in quasispecies evolution for three different topologies of the genome space. They are a) hypercube b) rugged landscape modelled by an ultrametric space, and c) holey landscape…
We study the adaptation dynamics of an initially maladapted population evolving via the elementary processes of mutation and selection. The evolution occurs on rugged fitness landscapes which are defined on the multi-dimensional genotypic…
Biological evolution can be conceptualized as a search process in the space of gene sequences guided by the fitness landscape, a mapping that assigns a measure of reproductive value to each genotype. Here we discuss probabilistic models of…
Biological evolution in a sequence space with random fitnesses is studied within Eigen's quasispecies model. A strong selection limit is employed, in which the population resides at a single sequence at all times. Evolutionary trajectories…
Growing efforts to measure fitness landscapes in molecular and microbial systems are premised on a tight relationship between landscape topography and evolutionary trajectories. This relationship, however, is far from being straightforward:…
The interaction networks of biological systems are known to take on several non-random structural properties, some of which are believed to positively influence system robustness. Researchers are only starting to understand how these…
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…
Genetic hitchhiking describes evolution at a neutral locus that is linked to a selected locus. If a beneficial allele rises to fixation at the selected locus, a characteristic polymorphism pattern (so-called selective sweep) emerges at the…
Most of the DNA that composes a complex organism is non-coding and defined as junk. Even the coding part is composed of genes that affect the phenotype differently. Therefore, a random mutation has an effect on the specimen fitness that…
Evolutionary dynamics in an uncorrelated rugged fitness landscape is studied in the framework of Eigen's molecular quasispecies model. We consider the case of strong selection, which is analogous to the zero temperature limit in the…
Standard evolutionary theories of aging and mortality, implicitly based on assumptions of spatial averaging, hold that natural selection cannot favor shorter lifespan without direct compensating benefit to individual reproductive success.…
When mutations are rampant, quasispecies theory or Eigen's model predicts that the fittest type in a population may not dominate. Beyond a critical mutation rate, the population may even be delocalized completely from the peak of the…
In this paper, we study the equilibrium behavior of Eigen's quasispecies equations for an arbitrary gene network. We consider a genome consisting of $ N $ genes, so that each gene sequence $ \sigma $ may be written as $ \sigma = \sigma_1…
These notes introduce probabilistic landscape models defined on high-dimensional discrete sequence spaces. The models are motivated primarily by fitness landscapes in evolutionary biology, but links to statistical physics and computer…
With a view to connecting random mutation on the molecular level to punctuated equilibrium behavior on the phenotype level, we propose a new model for biological evolution, which incorporates random mutation and natural selection. In this…
Functional effects of different mutations are known to combine to the total effect in highly nontrivial ways. For the trait under evolutionary selection (`fitness'), measured values over all possible combinations of a set of mutations yield…
Identifying and quantifying the benefits of sex and recombination is a long standing problem in evolutionary theory. In particular, contradictory claims have been made about the existence of a benefit of recombination on high dimensional…
We investigate how the spectral and topological properties of electron systems evolve on a lattice that interpolates between the honeycomb and its 1/6-depleted structures through the introduction of selective random defects. We find that in…
Background: Recent experimental and theoretical studies have shown that small asexual populations evolving on complex fitness landscapes may achieve a higher fitness than large ones due to the increased heterogeneity of adaptive…
We investigate the fitness advantage associated with the robustness of a phenotype against deleterious mutations using deterministic mutation-selection models of quasispecies type equipped with a mesa shaped fitness landscape. We obtain…