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Updated: Aug 16, 2025

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations
Published on: February 3, 2023
The Memory Problem for Neutral Mutational Models of Evolution
1Department of Biology and Center for Computational Genetics and Genomics, Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, 19122, USA. daliberles@temple.edu.
Abstract:
Models for the evolution of various phenotypes are sometimes constructed with an assumption that mutational effects will be symmetrically distributed about a static mean. This model produces a memory effect that over long evolutionary times results in an expectation that randomized sequences underlying the genetic architecture of the trait will on average retain the ancestral phenotype. This expectation is unrealistic and also inconsistent with our current understanding of processes of molecular evolution.
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