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Accumulation and maintenance of information in evolution.
Michal Hledík1, Nick Barton1, Gašper Tkačik1
1Institute of Science and Technology Austria, AT-3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria.
Summary
Selection accumulates genomic information, guiding populations away from neutral evolution. This information gain is limited by selection costs, with efficient encoding reducing maintenance expenses.
Area of Science:
- Evolutionary biology
- Genetics
- Information theory
Background:
- Natural selection drives populations toward non-neutral states.
- Information theory provides a framework to quantify this genomic information accumulation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To quantify information accumulation in evolving populations.
- To establish bounds on information content and accumulation rates.
- To analyze the cost of selection and information maintenance.
Main Methods:
- Utilized Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence to measure information.
- Connected genetic load and fitness variance to the KL cost of control.
- Analyzed information bounds across various population genetics models (Wright-Fisher, Moran, diffusion).
Main Results:
- Population-level information sets an upper bound on genotype and phenotype information.
- Information accumulation rate is limited by population size and selection cost.
- Encoding strategy impacts information maintenance cost; polygenic traits are more efficient.
Conclusions:
- Selection encodes information in genomes, but this process is constrained by costs.
- Understanding these constraints is crucial for predicting evolutionary trajectories.
- Efficient information encoding is key for minimizing the cost of maintaining genetic information.
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