There's plenty of time for evolution

DOI10.1073/PNAS.1016207107MaRDI QIDQ4907452zbMATH OpenOpenAlexWikidataFDO

Authors Herbert S. Wilf, W. J. Ewens

Publication date 2 February 2013

Published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1010.5178

zbMATH Keywords

effects of natural selectionnecessary mutationstheory of radix-exchange sorting

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Radix representation; digital problems (11A63) Analysis of algorithms and problem complexity (68Q25) Problems related to evolution (92D15)

Abstract: Objections to Darwinian evolution are often based on the time required to carry out the necessary mutations. Seemingly, exponential numbers of mutations are needed. We show that such estimates ignore the effects of natural selection, and that the numbers of necessary mutations are thereby reduced to about $KlogL$, rather than $K^L$, where $L$ is the length of the genomic "word", and $K$ is the number of possible "letters" that can occupy any position in the word. The required theory makes contact with the theory of radix-exchange sorting in theoretical computer science, and the asymptotic analysis of certain sums that occur there.

Recommendations

• Evolution with State-Dependent Mutations
• Changing the pace of evolution
• The mathematics of Darwin's theory of evolution: 1859 and 150 years later
• Mutation Systems
• Waiting for \(m\) mutations

Cited in

(3)

• Fixation time for an evolutionary model
• The maximum of independent geometric random variables as the time for genomic evolution
• How is the time for evolution affected by effective population size?

This page was built for publication: There's plenty of time for evolution

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q4907452)