[ Log In | Register]
! Skip Navigation Links
Skip Navigation Links
Image of Discontinuity, Nonlinearity and Complexity
ISSN:2164-6376 (print)
ISSN:2164-6414 (online)
Discontinuity, Nonlinearity, and Complexity

Dimitry Volchenkov (editor), Dumitru Baleanu (editor)

Dimitry Volchenkov(editor)

Mathematics & Statistics, Texas Tech University, 1108 Memorial Circle, Lubbock, TX 79409, USA

Email: dr.volchenkov@gmail.com

Dumitru Baleanu (editor)

Cankaya University, Ankara, Turkey; Institute of Space Sciences, Magurele-Bucharest, Romania

Email: dumitru.baleanu@gmail.com

Modularity, Redundancy and the Problem of “Sex”

Discontinuity, Nonlinearity, and Complexity 7(4) (2018) 365--381 | DOI:10.5890/DNC.2018.12.002

Christopher R. Stephens

C$^{3}$ Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad and Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, CDMX 04510, México

Download Full Text PDF

 

Abstract

Homologous recombination, and the associated notion of sexual reproduction, are ubiquitous in the evolution of biological organisms. However, there is still no clear, generally accepted understanding of why it exists and under what circumstances it is useful. Here, we argue that its utility is strongly linked to specific types of fitness landscape. In particular, landscapes that are quasi-modular (weak additive epistasis) or redundant (negative epistasis), two properties that are also ubiquitous in biological systems. We further argue that recombination and modularity together are responsible for the formation of “building block hierarchies” where, to make compatible the two different types of building block, landscape blocks associated with modular fitness landscapes and uilding Block schemata defined by the recombination distribution, a meta-evolution is necessary, wherein the recombination distribution itself evolves, leading to recombination hotspots at the boundaries of landscape blocks. We finally argue that recombinative dynamics and modular landscapes are necessary conditions for the formation of building block hierarchies and, ultimately, life itself.

Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by DGAPA PAPIIT grant IN113414 and by a special CONACyT grant to the Centro de Ciencias de la Complejidad.

References

  1. [1]  Maynard Smith, J. (1971), What use is sex? Journal of Theoretical Biology, 30(2), 319-335.
  2. [2]  Eshel, I. and Feldman, M. (1970), On the evolutionary effect of recombination, Theoretical Population Biology, 1(1), 88-100.
  3. [3]  Fisher, R. (1930), The genetical theory of natural selection, Clarendon Press.
  4. [4]  Kondrashov, A. (1988), Deleterious mutations and the evolution of sexual reproduction, Nature, 336(6198), 435-440.
  5. [5]  Muller, H. (1932), Some genetic aspects of sex, The American Naturalist, 66(703), 118-138.
  6. [6]  Felsenstein, J. (1974), The evolutionary advantage of recombination, Genetics, 78(2), 737.
  7. [7]  Barton, N. and Charlesworth, B. (1998), Why sex and recombination? Science, 281(5385), 1986.
  8. [8]  Watson, R., Weinreich, D., and Wakeley, J. (2011), Genome structure and the benefit of sex, Wiley Online Library.
  9. [9]  Otto, S. and Lenormand, T. (2002), Resolving the paradox of sex and recombination, Nature Reviews Genetics, 3(4), 252-261.
  10. [10]  Feldman, M. (1972), Selection for linkage modification: I. Random mating populations. Theoretical Population Biology, 3(3), 324-346.
  11. [11]  Otto, S. and Feldman, M. (1997), Deleterious mutations, variable epistatic interactions, and the evolution of recombination, Theoretical Population Biology, 51(2), 134-147.
  12. [12]  Barton, N. (1995), A general model for the evolution of recombination, Genetical Research, 65(2), 123-144.
  13. [13]  Liberman, U. and Feldman, M. (2008) On the evolution of epistasis iii: the haploid case with mutation, Theoretical Population Biology, 73(2), 307-316.
  14. [14]  Zhivotovsky, L., Feldman, M., and Christiansen, F. (1994), Evolution of recombination among multiple selected loci: A generalized reduction principle. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 91(3), 1079.
  15. [15]  Charlesworth, B. (1990), Mutation-selection balance and the evolutionary advantage of sex and recombination, Genet. Res., 55(3), 199-221.
  16. [16]  Keightley, P. and Otto, S. (2006), Interference among deleterious mutations favours sex and recombination in finite populations. Nature, 443(7107), 89-92.
  17. [17]  Pepper, J. (2000), The evolution of modularity in genome architecture, Proceedings of the Artificial Life, 7, 9-12.
  18. [18]  Christiansen, F., Otto, S., Bergman, A., and Feldman, M. (1998),Waiting with and without recombination: the time to production of a double mutant, Theoretical Population Biology, 53(3), 199-215.
  19. [19]  Rice,W., et al. (2002), Experimental tests of the adaptive significance of sexual recombination, Nature Reviews Genetics, 3(4), 241-251.
  20. [20]  Stephens, C.R. and Mora-Vargas, J. (2000), Effective fitness as an alternative paradigm for evolutionary computation i: General formalism, Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines, 1(4), 363-378.
  21. [21]  Stadler, P. and Stephens, C. (2003), Landscapes and effective fitness, Comments on Theoretical Biology, 8(4-5), 389- 431.
  22. [22]  Simon, H. (1996), The Sciences of the Artificial, MIT Press.
  23. [23]  Holland, J. (1992), Adaptation in Natural and Artificial Systems. MIT Press.
  24. [24]  Schlosser, G. and Wagner, G. (2004), Modularity in Development and Evolution, University Of Chicago Press.
  25. [25]  Eigen, M. (1971), Selforganization of matter and the evolution of biological macromolecules, Die Naturwissenschaften, 10, 465-523.
  26. [26]  Stephens, C. and Poli, R. (2007), Coarse-grained dynamics for generalized recombination, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, 11(4), 541-557.
  27. [27]  Stephens, C.R. and Waelbroeck, H. (1999), Schemata evolution and building blocks, Evolutionary Computation, 7, 109-124.
  28. [28]  Stephens, C.R. (2002), The renormalization group and the dynamics of genetic systems, Acta Phys. Slov., 52, 515-524.
  29. [29]  Stephens, C., Arenas, E., Cervantes, J., Peralta, B., Ricalde, E., and Segura, C. (2006), When are building blocks useful? In Artificial Intelligence, 2006. MICAI'06. Fifth Mexican International Conference on, IEEE, 217-228.
  30. [30]  Stephens, C. and Cervantes, J. (2007), Just what are building blocks? Foundations of Genetic Algorithms, 15-34.
  31. [31]  Chryssomalakos, C. and Stephens, C.R. (2004), Covariant genetic dynamics, Evolutionary Computation, 15(3), 291- 320.
  32. [32]  Weinberger, E.D. (1991), Fourier and Taylor series on fitness landscapes, Biological Cybernetics, 65, 321-330.
  33. [33]  Goldberg, D.E. (1989), Genetic algorithms and Walsh functions: Part I. A gentle introduction. Complex Systems, 3, 123-152.
  34. [34]  Takahashi, Y. (1998), Convergence of simple genetic algorithms for the two-bit problem, Bio Systems, 46(3), 235.
  35. [35]  Del Río, M.B., Stephens, C.R., and Rosenblueth, D.A. (2015), Fitness landscape epistasis and recombination, Advances in Complex Systems, 18(07n08):1550026.
  36. [36]  Cervantes, J. and Stephens, C. (2009), Limitations of existing mutation rate heuristics and how a rank ga overcomes them, Evolutionary Computation, IEEE Transactions on, 13(2), 369-397.
  37. [37]  Cervantes, J. and Stephens, C.R. (2008), Rank based variation operators for genetic algorithms, ACM, 905-912.
  38. [38]  Livnat, A., Papadimitriou, C., Dushoff, J., and Feldman, M.W. (2008), A mixability theory for the role of sex in evolution, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(50), 19803-19808.
  39. [39]  Livnat, A., Papadimitriou, C., Pippenger, N., and Feldman, M.W. (2010), Sex, mixability, and modularity, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 107(4), 1452-1457.

Copyright © 2011-2024 L & H Scientific Publishing. All rights reserved. Wildcard SSL Certificates