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Related Experiment Video

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Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli

Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli

Published on: August 18, 2023

Molecular evolution under fitness fluctuations.

Ville Mustonen¹, Michael Lässig

¹Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, Zülpicher Str. 77, 50937 Köln, Germany.

Physical Review Letters

|March 21, 2008

Summary

Molecular evolution, driven by random fitness changes, shows maximum rates in a crossover regime. Adaptive evolution arises when fitness fluctuations are persistent, linking evolutionary genetics and statistical physics.

Area of Science:

Evolutionary genetics
Statistical physics
Population genetics

Background:

Molecular evolution is typically governed by fitness, mutations, and population fluctuations.
Fitness itself can be stochastic, with random switches in selection direction at genomic loci.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate molecular evolution under stochastic fitness changes.
To analyze the transition from annealed to quenched random fitness variables.
To determine conditions for maximum evolutionary rates and emergent adaptive evolution.

Main Methods:

Studied evolution with stochastic fitness, involving random selection switches.
Analyzed the impact of fluctuation correlation time versus mutation diffusion time.
Developed a joint statistical theory of reproductive and fitness fluctuations.

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Main Results:

The rate of evolution peaks in a crossover regime where time scales are comparable.
Adaptive evolution emerges in the quenched fitness regime.
Established a connection between evolutionary genetics and statistical physics of disordered systems.

Conclusions:

Stochastic fitness fluctuations significantly impact molecular evolution dynamics.
The study provides a theoretical framework connecting population genetics and disordered systems physics.
Recent genomic data supports the existence of fitness fluctuations.