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    The 'Butterfly effect' in Cayley graphs, and its relevance for evolutionary genomics

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    Suppose a finite set XX is repeatedly transformed by a sequence of permutations of a certain type acting on an initial element xx to produce a final state yy. We investigate how 'different' the resulting state y′y' to yy can be if a slight change is made to the sequence, either by deleting one permutation, or replacing it with another. Here the 'difference' between yy and y′y' might be measured by the minimum number of permutations of the permitted type required to transform yy to y′y', or by some other metric. We discuss this first in the general setting of sensitivity to perturbation of walks in Cayley graphs of groups with a specified set of generators. We then investigate some permutation groups and generators arising in computational genomics, and the statistical implications of the findings.Comment: 17 pages, 2 figure
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