Science Letter
December 30, 2008

PHYSICS;
Research by D.B. Saakian and colleagues in physics provides new insights

According to recent research from Yerevan, Armenia, "We introduce an
alternative way to study molecular evolution within well-established
Hamilton-Jacobi formalism, showing that for a broad class of fitness
landscapes it is possible to derive dynamics analytically within the
1/N accuracy, where N is the genome length. For a smooth and monotonic
fitness function this approach gives two dynamical phases: smooth
dynamics and discontinuous dynamics."

"The latter phase arises naturally with no explicite singular fitness
function, counterintuitively. The Hamilton-Jacobi method yields
straightforward analytical results for the models that utilize fitness
as a function of Hamming distance from a reference genome sequence,"
wrote D.B. Saakian and colleagues (see also Physics).

The researchers concluded: "We also show the way in which this method
gives dynamical phase structure for multipeak fitness."

Saakian and colleagues published their study in Physical Review E
(Dynamics of the Eigen and the Crow-Kimura models for molecular
evolution. Physical Review E, 2008;78(4 Part 1):1908).

For additional information, contact D.B. Saakian, Yerevan Physics
Institute, Alikhanian Bros St. 2, Yerevan 375036, Armenia.

Publisher contact information for the journal Physical Review E is:
American Physical Society, One Physics Ellipse, College Pk, MD
20740-3844, USA.

From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress