Related papers: Statistical properties of neutral evolution
Protein structures are much more conserved than sequences during evolution. Based on this observation, we investigate the consequences of structural conservation on protein evolution. We study seven of the most studied protein folds,…
We simulate neutral evolution of proteins imposing conservation of the thermodynamic stability of the native state in the framework of an effective model of folding thermodynamics. This procedure generates evolutionary trajectories in…
We simulate the evolution of a protein-like sequence subject to point mutations, imposing conservation of the ground state, thermodynamic stability and fast folding. Our model is aimed at describing neutral evolution of natural proteins. We…
Naturally evolving proteins gradually accumulate mutations while continuing to fold to thermodynamically stable native structures. This process of neutral protein evolution is an important mode of genetic change, and forms the basis for the…
It is well known amongst molecular biologists that proteins with a common ancestor and that perform the same function in similar organisms, can have rather different amino-acid sequences. Mutations have altered the amino-acid sequences…
We simulate the evolution of model protein sequences subject to mutations. A mutation is considered neutral if it conserves 1) the structure of the ground state, 2) its thermodynamic stability and 3) its kinetic accessibility. All other…
We derive an analytic expression for site-specific stationary distributions of amino acids from the Structurally Constrained Neutral (SCN) model of protein evolution with conservation of folding stability. The stationary distributions that…
We introduce a new model of evolution on a fitness landscape possessing a tunable degree of neutrality. The model allows us to study the general properties of molecular species undergoing neutral evolution. We find that a number of…
The relationship between sequences and secondary structures or shapes in RNA exhibits robust statistical properties summarized by three notions: (1) the notion of a typical shape (that among all sequences of fixed length certain shapes are…
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 introduce and analyze a general model of a population evolving over a network of selectively neutral genotypes. We show that the population's limit distribution on the neutral network is solely determined by the network topology and…
It is important to understand how protein folding and evolution influences each other. Several studies based on entropy calculation correlating experimental measurement of residue participation in folding nucleus and sequence conservation…
We re-examine the evolutionary dynamics of RNA secondary structures under directional selection towards an optimum RNA structure. We find that the punctuated equilibria lead to a very slow approach to the optimum, following on average an…
The common understanding of protein evolution has been that neutral or slightly deleterious mutations are fixed by random drift, and evolutionary rate is determined primarily by the proportion of neutral mutations. However, recent studies…
Under constant selection, each trait has a fixed fitness, and small mutation rates allow populations to efficiently exploit the optimal trait. Therefore it is reasonable to expect mutation rates will evolve downwards. However, we find this…
Conventional population genetics considers the evolution of a limited number of genotypes corresponding to phenotypes with different fitness. As model phenotypes, in particular RNA secondary structure, have become computationally tractable,…
We investigate a neutral model for speciation and extinction, the constant rate birth-death process. The process is conditioned to have $n$ extant species today, we look at the tree distribution of the reconstructed trees-- i.e. the trees…
The number of substitutions (of nucleotides, amino acids, ...) that take place during the evolution of a sequence is a stochastic variable of fundamental importance in the field of molecular evolution. Although the mean number of…
If two species exhibit different nonlinear responses to a single shared resource, and if each species modifies the resource dynamics such that this favors its competitor, they may stably coexist. This coexistence mechanism, known as…
The functioning of animal as well as human societies fundamentally relies on cooperation. Yet, defection is often favorable for the selfish individual, and social dilemmas arise. Selection by individuals' fitness, usually the basic driving…