How the Quasispecies Evolution Depends on the Topology of the Genome Space

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the topology of genome space influences the error threshold transition in quasispecies evolution, analyzing hypercube, ultrametric, and Bethe lattice models, and finds a super-universal critical exponent.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of error threshold transitions across different genome space topologies, revealing a super-universal critical exponent.

Findings

Error threshold transition exists in all studied topologies

Critical exponents are calculated for each topology

Super-universal value found for susceptibility exponent

Abstract

We compared the properties of the error threshold transition in quasispecies evolution for three different topologies of the genome space. They are a) hypercube b) rugged landscape modelled by an ultrametric space, and c) holey landscape modelled by Bethe lattice. In all studied topologies the phase transition exists. We calculated the critical exponents in all the cases. For the critical exponent corresponding to appropriately defined susceptibility we found super-universal value.