Related papers: Genetic Variability of Splicing Sites
We study genetic networks that produce many species of non-coding RNA molecules that are present at a moderate density, as typically exists in the cell. The associations of the many species of these RNA are modeled physically, taking into…
Genetic systems with multiple loci can have complex dynamics. For example, mean fitness need not always increase and stable cycling is possible. Here, we study the dynamics of a genetic system inspired by the molecular biology of…
Cells are known to utilize biochemical noise to probabilistically switch between distinct gene expression states. We demonstrate that such noise-driven switching is dominated by tails of probability distributions and is therefore…
We propose a simple adaptive-network model describing recent swarming experiments. Exploiting an analogy with human decision making, we capture the dynamics of the model by a low-dimensional system of equations permitting analytical…
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…
The 3D folding of a mammalian gene can be studied by a polymer model, where the chromatin fibre is represented by a semiflexible polymer which interacts with multivalent proteins, representing complexes of DNA-binding transcription factors…
Population structure has been known to substantially affect evolutionary dynamics. Networks that promote the spreading of fitter mutants are called amplifiers of natural selection, and those that suppress the spreading of fitter mutants are…
A mutator is an allele that increases the mutation rate throughout the genome by disrupting some aspect of DNA replication or repair. Mutators that increase the mutation rate by the order of 100 fold have been observed to spontaneously…
Background: Acceleration of adaptation dynamics by stress-induced hypermutation has been found experimentally. Evolved evolvability is a prominent explanation. We investigate a more generally applicable explanation by a physical constraint.…
Motivation: Genome rearrangement plays an important role in evolutionary biology and has profound impacts on phenotype in organisms ranging from microbes to humans. The mechanisms for genome rearrangement events remain unclear. Lots of…
Spontaneous switching events in most characterized genetic switches are rare, resulting in extremely stable epigenetic properties. We show how simple arguments lead to theories of the rate of such events much like the absolute rate theory…
RNA-sequencing has revolutionized biomedical research and, in particular, our ability to study gene alternative splicing. The problem has important implications for human health, as alternative splicing may be involved in malfunctions at…
Several recent experiments suggest that sharply bent DNA has a surprisingly high bending flexibility, but the cause of this flexibility is poorly understood. Although excitation of flexible defects can explain these results, whether such…
Genome rearrangements are evolutionary events that shuffle genomic architectures. Most frequent genome rearrangements are reversals, translocations, fusions, and fissions. While there are some more complex genome rearrangements such as…
Replication of genetic material is an important process for all living organisms. Origins of replication initiate the copying of DNA at many points on a chromosome, and it is the distribution of these points that is relevant here, as it…
Site-specific recombination on supercoiled circular DNA molecules can yield a variety of knots and catenanes. Twist knots are some of the most common conformations of these products and they can act as substrates for further rounds of…
Adaptation in response to selection on polygenic phenotypes may occur via subtle allele frequencies shifts at many loci. Current population genomic techniques are not well posed to identify such signals. In the past decade, detailed…
Speciation is of fundamental importance to understanding the huge diversity of life on Earth. In contrast to current phenomenological models, we develop a biophysically motivated approach to study speciation involving the co-evolution of…
Recent studies reveal even the smallest genomes such as viruses evolve through complex and stochastic processes, and the assumption of independent alleles is not valid in most applications. Advances in sequencing technologies produce…
Spatially resolved genetic data is increasingly used to reconstruct the migrational history of species. To assist such inference, we study, by means of simulations and analytical methods, the dynamics of neutral gene frequencies in a…