45
views
0
recommends
+1 Recommend
0 collections
    0
    shares
      • Record: found
      • Abstract: found
      • Article: not found

      Evolution of digital organisms at high mutation rates leads to survival of the flattest.

      1 , , , ,
      Nature
      Springer Science and Business Media LLC

      Read this article at

      ScienceOpenPublisherPubMed
      Bookmark
          There is no author summary for this article yet. Authors can add summaries to their articles on ScienceOpen to make them more accessible to a non-specialist audience.

          Abstract

          Darwinian evolution favours genotypes with high replication rates, a process called 'survival of the fittest'. However, knowing the replication rate of each individual genotype may not suffice to predict the eventual survivor, even in an asexual population. According to quasi-species theory, selection favours the cloud of genotypes, interconnected by mutation, whose average replication rate is highest. Here we confirm this prediction using digital organisms that self-replicate, mutate and evolve. Forty pairs of populations were derived from 40 different ancestors in identical selective environments, except that one of each pair experienced a 4-fold higher mutation rate. In 12 cases, the dominant genotype that evolved at the lower mutation rate achieved a replication rate >1.5-fold faster than its counterpart. We allowed each of these disparate pairs to compete across a range of mutation rates. In each case, as mutation rate was increased, the outcome of competition switched to favour the genotype with the lower replication rate. These genotypes, although they occupied lower fitness peaks, were located in flatter regions of the fitness surface and were therefore more robust with respect to mutations.

          Related collections

          Author and article information

          Journal
          Nature
          Nature
          Springer Science and Business Media LLC
          0028-0836
          0028-0836
          Jul 19 2001
          : 412
          : 6844
          Affiliations
          [1 ] Digital Life Laboratory, Mail Code 136-93, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA. wilke@caltech.edu
          Article
          35085569
          10.1038/35085569
          11460163
          eb3e8513-09ed-4ec0-95f4-e4b5e63f7c9a
          History

          Comments

          Comment on this article