Extending the applicability of Thermal Dynamics to Evolutionary Biology

TL;DR

This paper broadens the application of thermal dynamics models to more complex evolutionary systems with rugged fitness landscapes and clonal interference, offering new insights and methods inspired by glass physics.

Contribution

It extends the thermal dynamics analogy to systems with rugged landscapes and strong clonal interference, enhancing understanding of evolutionary processes.

Findings

Thermal dynamics applies more generally to complex evolutionary systems.

Glass physics concepts can inform evolutionary modeling.

Numerical simulations can benefit from this extended analogy.

Abstract

In the past years, a remarkable mapping has been found between the dynamics of a population of M individuals undergoing random mutations and selection, and that of a single system in contact with a thermal bath with temperature 1/M. This correspondence holds under the somewhat restrictive condition that the population is dominated by a single type at almost all times, punctuated by rare successive mutations. Here we argue that such thermal dynamics will hold more generally, specifically in systems with rugged fitness landscapes. This includes cases with strong clonal interference, where a number of concurrent mutants dominate the population. The problem becomes closely analogous to the experimental situation of glasses subjected to controlled variations of parameters such as temperature, pressure or magnetic fields. Non-trivial suggestions from the field of glasses may be thus proposed for evolutionary systems - including a large part of the numerical simulation procedures - that in many cases would have been counter intuitive without this background.