Selective pressures on genomes in molecular evolution

We describe the evolution of macromolecules as an information transmission process and apply tools from Shannon information theory to it. This allows us to isolate three independent, competing selective pressures that we term compression, transmission, and neutrality selection. The first two affect...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of theoretical biology 2003-06, Vol.222 (4), p.477-483
Main Authors: Ofria, Charles, Adami, Christoph, Collier, Travis C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Avida
Digital Life
Evolution, Molecular
Genome
Information Theory
Models, Genetic
Molecular evolution
Mutation
Neutrality
Selection, Genetic
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We describe the evolution of macromolecules as an information transmission process and apply tools from Shannon information theory to it. This allows us to isolate three independent, competing selective pressures that we term compression, transmission, and neutrality selection. The first two affect genome length: the pressure to conserve resources by compressing the code, and the pressure to acquire additional information that improves the channel, increasing the rate of information transmission into each offspring. Noisy transmission channels (replication with mutations) give rise to a third pressure that acts on the actual encoding of information; it maximizes the fraction of mutations that are neutral with respect to the phenotype. This neutrality selection has important implications for the evolution of evolvability. We demonstrate each selective pressure in experiments with digital organisms.
ISSN:0022-5193
1095-8541
DOI:10.1016/S0022-5193(03)00062-6