Cargando…

Evolutionarily stable disequilibrium: endless dynamics of evolution in a stationary population

Evolution is often conceived as changes in the properties of a population over generations. Does this notion exhaust the possible dynamics of evolution? Life is hierarchically organized, and evolution can operate at multiple levels with conflicting tendencies. Using a minimal model of such conflicti...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Takeuchi, Nobuto, Kaneko, Kunihiko, Hogeweg, Paulien
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874703/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27147095
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.3109
_version_ 1782433079097294848
author Takeuchi, Nobuto
Kaneko, Kunihiko
Hogeweg, Paulien
author_facet Takeuchi, Nobuto
Kaneko, Kunihiko
Hogeweg, Paulien
author_sort Takeuchi, Nobuto
collection PubMed
description Evolution is often conceived as changes in the properties of a population over generations. Does this notion exhaust the possible dynamics of evolution? Life is hierarchically organized, and evolution can operate at multiple levels with conflicting tendencies. Using a minimal model of such conflicting multilevel evolution, we demonstrate the possibility of a novel mode of evolution that challenges the above notion: individuals ceaselessly modify their genetically inherited phenotype and fitness along their lines of descent, without involving apparent changes in the properties of the population. The model assumes a population of primitive cells (protocells, for short), each containing a population of replicating catalytic molecules. Protocells are selected towards maximizing the catalytic activity of internal molecules, whereas molecules tend to evolve towards minimizing it in order to maximize their relative fitness within a protocell. These conflicting evolutionary tendencies at different levels and genetic drift drive the lineages of protocells to oscillate endlessly between high and low intracellular catalytic activity, i.e. high and low fitness, along their lines of descent. This oscillation, however, occurs independently in different lineages, so that the population as a whole appears stationary. Therefore, ongoing evolution can be hidden behind an apparently stationary population owing to conflicting multilevel evolution.
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-4874703
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2016
publisher The Royal Society
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-48747032016-05-25 Evolutionarily stable disequilibrium: endless dynamics of evolution in a stationary population Takeuchi, Nobuto Kaneko, Kunihiko Hogeweg, Paulien Proc Biol Sci Research Articles Evolution is often conceived as changes in the properties of a population over generations. Does this notion exhaust the possible dynamics of evolution? Life is hierarchically organized, and evolution can operate at multiple levels with conflicting tendencies. Using a minimal model of such conflicting multilevel evolution, we demonstrate the possibility of a novel mode of evolution that challenges the above notion: individuals ceaselessly modify their genetically inherited phenotype and fitness along their lines of descent, without involving apparent changes in the properties of the population. The model assumes a population of primitive cells (protocells, for short), each containing a population of replicating catalytic molecules. Protocells are selected towards maximizing the catalytic activity of internal molecules, whereas molecules tend to evolve towards minimizing it in order to maximize their relative fitness within a protocell. These conflicting evolutionary tendencies at different levels and genetic drift drive the lineages of protocells to oscillate endlessly between high and low intracellular catalytic activity, i.e. high and low fitness, along their lines of descent. This oscillation, however, occurs independently in different lineages, so that the population as a whole appears stationary. Therefore, ongoing evolution can be hidden behind an apparently stationary population owing to conflicting multilevel evolution. The Royal Society 2016-05-11 /pmc/articles/PMC4874703/ /pubmed/27147095 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.3109 Text en © 2016 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Takeuchi, Nobuto
Kaneko, Kunihiko
Hogeweg, Paulien
Evolutionarily stable disequilibrium: endless dynamics of evolution in a stationary population
title Evolutionarily stable disequilibrium: endless dynamics of evolution in a stationary population
title_full Evolutionarily stable disequilibrium: endless dynamics of evolution in a stationary population
title_fullStr Evolutionarily stable disequilibrium: endless dynamics of evolution in a stationary population
title_full_unstemmed Evolutionarily stable disequilibrium: endless dynamics of evolution in a stationary population
title_short Evolutionarily stable disequilibrium: endless dynamics of evolution in a stationary population
title_sort evolutionarily stable disequilibrium: endless dynamics of evolution in a stationary population
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4874703/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27147095
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2015.3109
work_keys_str_mv AT takeuchinobuto evolutionarilystabledisequilibriumendlessdynamicsofevolutioninastationarypopulation
AT kanekokunihiko evolutionarilystabledisequilibriumendlessdynamicsofevolutioninastationarypopulation
AT hogewegpaulien evolutionarilystabledisequilibriumendlessdynamicsofevolutioninastationarypopulation