Results from the Simulation Model of Competing Bit String Populations

Abstract

<div><p>The best solution obtained by searching over parameter space is shown (<i>s</i>_CSVd = 0.33, <i>s</i>_CChMVd = 0.05, <i>μ</i> = 0.016, <i>μ</i>^UVC = 0.063, and <i>k_c</i> = 3).</p><p>(A) Population dynamics under control and UVC conditions, sampled over five different replicates over 40 generations.</p><p>(B) Average Hamming distance among sampled digital viroids (± SEM). Solid bars correspond to the control conditions, open bars to UVC conditions, and gray bars to UVC conditions after exclusion of the 66.5% CSVd lethal genotypes from the computations. </p><p>(C) The survival-of-the-flattest effect is shown here using the two populations that evolved separately with increasing mutation rates. The average fitness for each population is plotted against mutation rate. Using the above <i>s</i>_CSVd, <i>s</i>_CChMVd, and <i>k_c</i> values, the mutation rate was allowed to vary from <i>μ</i> = 0.001 to <i>μ</i> = 0.15. At a given critical mutation rate (here <i>μ_crit</i> = 0.059), the average fitness of digital-CSVd (solid dots and continuous line) starts to decay below the one shown by digital-CChMVd (open dots and dashed line). The domain where the flattest wins over the fittest is indicated as a gray area.</p><p>(D) Shows a cartoon interpretation of the observed effect of high mutation rate on average fitness and variability.</p></div