Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 23, 2026

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations
Published on: February 3, 2023
Spontaneous emergence of modularity in a model of evolving individuals and in real networks
Jiankui He1, Jun Sun, Michael W Deem
1Departments of Physics and Astronomy and Bioengineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA.
Abstract:
We investigate the selective forces that promote the emergence of modularity in nature. We demonstrate the spontaneous emergence of modularity in a population of individuals that evolve in a changing environment. We show that the level of modularity correlates with the rapidity and severity of environmental change. The modularity arises as a synergistic response to the noise in the environment in the presence of horizontal gene transfer. We suggest that the hierarchical structure observed in the natural world may be a broken symmetry state, which generically results from evolution in a changing environment. To support our results, we analyze experimental protein interaction data and show that protein interaction networks became increasingly modular as evolution proceeded over the last four billion years. We also discuss a method to determine the divergence time of a protein.
More Related Videos
Related Concept Videos
Evolution of New Traits in Microbes
Mechanistic Models: Compartment Models in Individual and Population Analysis
Evolutionary Processes in Microbes
Multicompartment Models: Overview
These models offer a more comprehensive representation of drug behavior in the body than one-compartment models. They accommodate the complexity of drug distribution,...
Evolutionary Psychology
Mechanistic Models: Overview of Compartment Models

