Punctuated equilibrium and shock waves in molecular models of biological evolution

We consider the dynamics in infinite population evolution models with a general symmetric fitness landscape. We find shock waves, i.e., discontinuous transitions in the mean fitness, in evolution dynamics even with smooth fitness landscapes, which means that the search for the optimal evolution traj...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics, 2014-08, Vol.90 (2), p.022712-022712, Article 022712
Main Authors: Saakian, David B, Ghazaryan, Makar H, Hu, Chin-Kun
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biological Evolution
Epistasis, Genetic
Evolution, Molecular
Models, Genetic
Mutation
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Summary:We consider the dynamics in infinite population evolution models with a general symmetric fitness landscape. We find shock waves, i.e., discontinuous transitions in the mean fitness, in evolution dynamics even with smooth fitness landscapes, which means that the search for the optimal evolution trajectory is more complicated. These shock waves appear in the case of positive epistasis and can be used to represent punctuated equilibria in biological evolution during long geological time scales. We find exact analytical solutions for discontinuous dynamics at the large-genome-length limit and derive optimal mutation rates for a fixed fitness landscape to send the population from the initial configuration to some final configuration in the fastest way.
ISSN:1539-3755
1550-2376
DOI:10.1103/physreve.90.022712