The rhythm of microbial adaptation

The evolutionary biologist "studies the steps by which the miraculous adaptations so characteristic of every aspect of the organic world have evolved". But the general nature of such adaptive steps is still unclear. Evolution is often thought to be random and dependent on unpredictable eve...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature (London) 2001-09, Vol.413 (6853), p.299-302
Main Author: Gerrish, Philip
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adaptation
Adaptation, Physiological
Bacterial Physiological Phenomena
Bacteriology
Biological and medical sciences
Biological Evolution
Computer Simulation
Evolution
Evolution, Molecular
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
HIV-1 - genetics
HIV-1 - physiology
Humanities and Social Sciences
letter
Mathematics
Microbiology
Microorganisms
Miscellaneous
Models, Biological
multidisciplinary
Mutation
Periodicity
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Selection, Genetic
Stochastic Processes
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:The evolutionary biologist "studies the steps by which the miraculous adaptations so characteristic of every aspect of the organic world have evolved". But the general nature of such adaptive steps is still unclear. Evolution is often thought to be random and dependent on unpredictable events. In this light, one might expect the steps taken by adaptation to be completely random, both biologically and temporally. Here I present a mathematical derivation to show that, on the contrary, adaptive steps can have fairly strong rhythm. I find that the strength of the adaptive rhythm, that is its relative temporal regularity, is equal to a constant that is the same for all microbial populations. As a consequence, numbers of accumulated adaptations are predicted to have a universal variance/mean ratio. The theory derived here is potentially applicable to the study of molecular evolution.
ISSN:0028-0836
1476-4687
DOI:10.1038/35095046