Open Quasispecies Systems: New Approach to Evolutionary Adaptation

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modified open quasispecies model with explicit death flow, exploring how evolutionary parameters adapt to maximize mean fitness, and discusses the implications for understanding evolutionary transitions and fitness landscape adaptation.

Contribution

It presents a new open quasispecies model incorporating death flow and analyzes how parameters evolve to optimize fitness, offering a novel perspective on evolutionary dynamics.

Findings

Major evolutionary transitions occur in steady-state conditions.

The model links timescale separation to adaptation processes.

Reinterprets Fisher's theorem in the context of open systems.

Abstract

Consider a mathematical model of evolutionary adaptation of fitness landscape and mutation matrix as a reaction to population changes. As a basis, we use an open quasispecies model, which is modified to include explicit death flow. We assume that evolutionary parameters of mutation and selection processes vary in a way to maximize the mean fitness of the system. From this standpoint, Fisher's theorem of natural selection is being rethought and discussed. Another assumption is that system dynamics has two significant timescales. According to our central hypothesis, major evolutionary transitions happen in the steady-state of the corresponding dynamical system, so the evolutionary time is much slower than the one of internal dynamics. For the specific cases of quasispecies systems, we show how our premises form the fitness landscape adaptation process.