Berlin 2018 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 45: Statistical Physics in Biological Systems (joint session DY/BP)

DY 45.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 14, 2018, 10:30–10:45, BH-N 333

The rate of recombination and its effect on mutational robustness — •Alexander Klug and Joachim Krug — Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität zu Köln, Germany

Mutational robustness refers to the effect of mutations on the fitness of a population. In case of high mutational robustness most mutations do not change the fitness or have only a minor effect on it. Hence from the point of view of fitness landscapes, mutational robustness describes the occurrence of clusters of genotypes of almost equal fitness. Using a deterministic population model with selection and mutation it can be shown that the population slightly favours genotypes inside such clusters which therefore results in increased mutational robustness[1]. We show that this effect is strongly enhanced by the introduction of recombination on the basis of analytical results for a two-locus landscape and numerical results for different neutral landscape models with multiple loci.
[1] E. van Nimwegen, J. P. Crutchfield, M. Huynen, PNAS 96:9716-9720 (1999)