Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 13, 2026

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations
Published on: February 3, 2023
Emergence of order in selection-mutation dynamics
Christoph Marx1, Harald A Posch, Walter Thirring
1Faculty of Physics, Universität Wien, Boltzmanngasse 5, A-1090 Wien, Austria.
Abstract:
We characterize the time evolution of a d -dimensional probability distribution by the value of its final entropy. If it is near the maximally possible value we call the evolution mixing, if it is near zero we say it is purifying. The evolution is determined by the simplest nonlinear equation and contains a d x d matrix as input. Since we are not interested in a particular evolution but in the general features of evolutions of this type, we take the matrix elements as uniformly distributed random numbers between zero and some specified upper bound. Computer simulations show how the final entropies are distributed over this field of random numbers. The result is that the distribution crowds at the maximum entropy, if the upper bound is unity. If we restrict the dynamical matrices to certain regions in matrix space, to diagonal or triangular matrices, for instance, then the entropy distribution is maximal near zero, and the dynamics typically becomes purifying.
Related Concept Videos
Types of Selection
Evolution of New Traits in Microbes
Mutation, Gene Flow, and Genetic Drift
Frequency-dependent Selection
Mismatch Repair
The Mutator Protein Family Plays a Key Role in DNA Mismatch Repair
The human genome has more than 3 billion base pairs of DNA per cell. Prior to cell division, that vast amount of genetic...
Mismatch Repair
