Related papers: Biology's next revolution
The haloarchaea are aerobic, heterotrophic, photophosphorylating prokaryotes, whose supposed closest relatives and ancestors, the methanogens, are CO2-reducing, anaerobic chemolithotrophs. Using two available haloarchaeal genomes we firstly…
We examine the evolution of expression patterns and the organization of genetic information in populations of self-replicating digital organisms. Seeding the experiments with a linearly expressed ancestor, we witness the development of…
A series of results of evolution supervised by genetic algorithms with interest to agricultural and horticultural fields are reviewed. New obtained original results from the use of genetic algorithms on structure-activity relationships are…
Horizontal transfer (HT) of heritable information or `traits' (carried by genetic elements, endosymbionts, or culture) is widespread among living organisms. Yet current ecological and evolutionary theory addressing HT is limited. We present…
The idea that there are any large-scale trends in the evolution of biological organisms is highly controversial. It is commonly believed, for example, that there is a large-scale trend in evolution towards increasing complexity, but…
Understanding how genotypes map onto phenotypes, fitness, and eventually organisms is arguably the next major missing piece in a fully predictive theory of evolution. We refer to this generally as the problem of the genotype-phenotype map.…
We live within an increasingly technological, information-laden environment for the first time in human evolution.This subjects us, and will continue to subject us in an accelerating fashion, to an unremitting exposure to meaningful…
We have used the Monte Carlo based computer models to show that selection pressure could affect the distribution of recombination hotspots along the chromosome. Close to critical crossover rate, where genomes may switch between the…
We introduce the notion of evolution on sets and study several sets endowed with this structure and obtain some results about this new notion.
Our planet is experiencing an accelerated process of change associated to a variety of anthropogenic phenomena. The future of this transformation is uncertain, but there is general agreement about its negative unfolding that might threaten…
We model evolution of plants in a world, made up of different locations, with multiple environments (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive subsets of locations). Each environment (landmass) has temperature, rainfall, and other…
Advances in science are being sought in newly available opportunities to collect massive quantities of data about complex systems. While key advances are being made in detailed mapping of systems, how to relate this data to solving many of…
Our understanding of the evolutionary process has gone a long way since the publication, 150 years ago, of "On the origin of species" by Charles R. Darwin. The XXth Century witnessed great efforts to embrace replication, mutation, and…
Evolution has fascinated quantitative and physical scientists for decades: how can the random process of mutation, recombination, and duplication of genetic information generate the diversity of life? What determines the rate of evolution?…
Spatial systems with heterogeneities are ubiquitous in nature, from precipitation, temperature and soil gradients controlling vegetation growth to morphogen gradients controlling gene expression in embryos. Such systems, generally described…
Biological approximations, which are universal for diverse species, are well known. With no other experimental data, their invariance to transformations from one species to another yields exact conservation (with respect to biological…
Evolutionary dynamics is often viewed as a subtle process of change accumulation that causes a divergence among organisms and their genomes. However, this interpretation is an inheritance of a gradualistic view that has been challenged at…
Evolution is the theory that plants and animals today have come from kinds that have existed in the past. Scientists such as Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace dedicate their life to observe how species interact with their environment, grow,…
The human microbiome is the ensemble of genes in the microbes that live inside and on the surface of humans. Because microbial sequencing information is now much easier to come by than phenotypic information, there has been an explosion of…
One of the main properties of biological systems is modularity, which manifests itself at all levels of their organization, starting with the level of molecular genetics, ending with the level of whole organisms and their communities. In a…