Second Order Catalytic Quasispecies Yields Discontinuous Mean Fitness at Error Threshold
Condensed Matter journal club
Second Order Catalytic Quasispecies Yields Discontinuous Mean Fitness at Error Threshold
- Event time: 11:30am
- Event date: 25th June 2010
- Speaker: Dr Bartlomiej Waclaw (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
- Location: Room 2511, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
Abstract
The quasispecies model describes processes related to the origin of life and viral evolutionary dynamics. We discuss how the error catastrophe that reflects the transition from localized to delocalized quasispecies population is affected by catalytic replication of different reaction orders. Specifically, we find that second order mechanisms lead to a discontinuity in the mean fitness of the population at the error threshold. This is in contrast to the behavior of the first order, autocatalytic replication mechanism considered in the standard quasispecies model. This suggests that quasispecies models with higher order replication mechanisms produce discontinuities in the mean fitness, and hence the viable population fraction as well, at the error threshold, while lower order replication mechanisms yield a continuous mean fitness function. We discuss potential implications for understanding replication in the RNA world and in virology.Phys. Rev. Lett. 104 188101 (2010)
Authors
N. Wagner, E. Tannenbaum and G. Ashkenasy
About Condensed Matter journal club
Given the diversity of research in the CM group, chosen topics vary widely. We tend to stick to high-impact journals - Nature, Science, PNAS and PRL have been popular - but this is not prescriptive..