4,775 research outputs found
Tradeoff between short-term and long-term adaptation in a changing environment
We investigate the competition dynamics of two microbial or viral strains
that live in an environment that switches periodically between two states. One
of the strains is adapted to the long-term environment, but pays a short-term
cost, while the other is adapted to the short-term environment and pays a cost
in the long term. We explore the tradeoff between these alternative strategies
in extensive numerical simulations, and present a simple analytic model that
can predict the outcome of these competitions as a function of the mutation
rate and the time scale of the environmental changes. Our model is relevant for
arboviruses, which alternate between different host species on a regular basis.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures, PRE in pres
Analytical methods for bacterial kinetics studies
Methods utilize mathematical equations and models and specialized computer techniques. Techniques apply to food production, complex chemicals production, and polluted water purification
Poisoning of Hydrogen Dissociation at Pd (100) by Adsorbed Sulfur Studied by ab initio Quantum Dynamics and ab initio Molecular Dynamics
We report calculations of the dissociative adsorption of H_2 at Pd (100)
covered with 1/4 monolayer of sulfur using quantum dynamics as well as
molecular dynamics and taking all six degrees of freedom of the two H atoms
fully into account. The ab initio potential-energy surface (PES) is found to be
very strongly corrugated. In particular we discuss the influence of tunneling,
zero-point vibrations, localization of the nuclei's wave function when narrow
valleys of the PES are passed, steering of the approaching H_2 molecules
towards low energy barrier configurations, and the time scales of the center of
mass motion and the other degrees of freedom. Several ``established'' concepts,
which were derived from low-dimensional dynamical studies, are shown to be not
valid.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Surf. Sci. Lett. Other related
publications can be found at http://www.rz-berlin.mpg.de/th/paper.htm
Selective pressures on genomes in molecular evolution
We describe the evolution of macromolecules as an information transmission
process and apply tools from Shannon information theory to it. This allows us
to isolate three independent, competing selective pressures that we term
compression, transmission, and neutrality selection. The first two affect
genome length: the pressure to conserve resources by compressing the code, and
the pressure to acquire additional information that improves the channel,
increasing the rate of information transmission into each offspring. Noisy
transmission channels (replication with mutations) gives rise to a third
pressure that acts on the actual encoding of information; it maximizes the
fraction of mutations that are neutral with respect to the phenotype. This
neutrality selection has important implications for the evolution of
evolvability. We demonstrate each selective pressure in experiments with
digital organisms.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures, to be published in J. theor. Biolog
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