Non-Darwinian Evolution

King, Jaime S.; Jukes, Thomas H.

doi:10.1126/science.164.3881.788

Cited by 1,591 publications

(727 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…This allows fixation of mutants that are slightly deleterious for contemporary conditions but which may have other useful effects for adaptation to a new environment. Here again we find that the paradigm of the neutral theory (2) or "hon-Darwinian" view (3) gives adequate explanation for phenomena relating to progressive evolution.…”

mentioning

confidence: 56%

Fixation of a deleterious allele at one of two "duplicate" loci by mutation pressure and random drift.

Kimura¹,

King²

1979

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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We consider a diploid population and assume two gene loci with two alleles each, A and a at one locus and B and b at the second locus. Mutation from wild-type alleles A and B to deleterious alleles a and b occurs with mutation rates Va and vb, respectively. We assume that alleles are completely recessive and that only the double recessive genotype aabb shows a deleterious effect with relative fitness I -e. Then, it can be shown that if v. > vb mutant a becomes fixed in the population by mutation pressure and a mutation-selection balance is ultimately attained with respect to the B/b locus alone. The main aim of this paper is to investigate the situation in which va = vb exactly. In this case a neutral equilibrium is attained and either locus can drift to fixation for the mutant allele. Diffusion models are developed to treat the stochastic process involved whereby the deleterious mutant eventually becomes fixed in one of the two duplicated loci by random sampling drift in finite populations. In particular, the equation for the average time until fixation of mutant a or b is derived, and this is solved numerically for some combinations of parameters 4Nev and 4Ne, where v is the mutation rate (Va = Vb --v) and Ne is the effective size of the population. Monte Carlo experiments have been performed (using a device termed "pseudo sampling variable") to supplement the numerical analysis.It is expected that, in natural populations, deleterious alleles are constantly arising by mutations at every gene locus. However, frequencies of such alleles are kept low by natural selection, unless the deleterious effects are extremely small (smaller than the reciprocal of the effective population size).It is common sense in population genetics that the mutation pressure can not overcome the barrier of negative selection. An interesting exception to this rule occurs when the environment changes in such a way that the wild-type alleje at one locus becomes no longer necessary. Then, amorphic mutations at that locus become selectively neutral and mutation pressure, in conjunction with random genetic drift, can lead one of such alleles to eventual fixation in the population. The loss of vitamin C synthesizing ability in several vertebrates can be explained in the light of such considerations (1). Gene duplications also create conditions that enable random drift to operate much more prominently on recessive deleterious mutants than what was possible before duplication (as we shall show later). This allows fixation of mutants that are slightly deleterious for contemporary conditions but which may have other useful effects for adaptation to a new environment. Here again we find that the paradigm of the neutral theory (2) or "hon-Darwinian" view (3) gives adequate explanation for phenomena relating to progressive evolution.The present paper consists of two parts. In the first part, we discuss a situation in which mutation pressure leads to fixation of a deleterious allele. In the second part, which is the main part of this paper, w...

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mentioning

confidence: 56%

Fixation of a deleterious allele at one of two "duplicate" loci by mutation pressure and random drift.

Kimura¹,

King²

1979

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…He was, of course, immersed in the views of his day, and considered several possible explanations for adaptive change (e.g., his ultimately unsuccessful theory of gemmules). Moreover, although Darwin did not use the term neutral evolution, he acknowledged that evolutionary change can involve fixation of variants that confer no selective advantage over previous adaptations; nevertheless, neutral evolution is commonly referred to as non-Darwinian [70,75,123]. Similarly, although Darwin was not committed to the idea that all life evolved from a single common ancestor, processes such as horizontal gene transfer (that is, genes transmitted between organisms in a manner other than through traditional reproduction) are commonly referred to as non-Darwinian [131].…”

Section: Terminologymentioning

confidence: 99%

An evolutionary framework for cultural change: Selectionism versus communal exchange

Gabora

2013

Physics of Life Reviews

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Dawkins' replicator-based conception of evolution has led to widespread misapplication of selectionism across the social sciences because it does not address the paradox that inspired the theory of natural selection in the first place: how do organisms accumulate change when traits acquired over their lifetime are obliterated? This is addressed by von Neumann's concept of a self-replicating automaton (SRA). A SRA consists of a self-assembly code that is used in two distinct ways: (1) actively deciphered during development to construct a self-similar replicant, and (2) passively copied to the replicant to ensure that it can reproduce. Information that is acquired over a lifetime is not transmitted to offspring, whereas information that is inherited during copying is transmitted. In cultural evolution there is no mechanism for discarding acquired change. Acquired change can accumulate orders of magnitude faster than, and quickly overwhelm, inherited change due to differential replication of variants in response to selection. This prohibits a selectionist but not an evolutionary framework for culture and the creative processes that fuel it. The importance non-Darwinian processes in biological evolution is increasingly recognized. Recent work on the origin of life suggests that early life evolved through a non-Darwinian process referred to as communal exchange that does not involve a self-assembly code, and that natural selection emerged from this more haphazard, ancestral evolutionary process. It is proposed that communal exchange provides an evolutionary framework for culture that enables specification of cognitive features necessary for a (real or artificial) society to evolve culture. This is supported by a computational model of cultural evolution and a conceptual network based program for documenting material cultural history, and it is consistent with high levels of human cooperation. Evolutionary Framework Culture 3Keywords: creativity, cultural evolution, meme, natural selection, replicator, selfreplicating automaton Evolutionary Framework Culture 4 IntroductionLike organisms, elements of culture exhibit descent with modification; new ideas and artifacts build adaptively on previous ones. If it were possible to root the social and behavioral sciences in an evolutionary framework, they might achieve a unification comparable with Darwin's unification of the life sciences. Thus it is unsurprising that, dating back to Herbert Spencer's introduction of the notion of social Darwinism a few years after Darwin's Origin of Species, Darwinian thinking has been applied to a range of phenomena outside of biology, including creativity [14,111], neural copying and pruning [11,12,13,23,26], law [55], cosmology [118], computer-mediated communication [74], and perhaps most extensively, cultural and economic change [7,8,15,71,86,87,107,108]. Elements of culture build on one another cumulatively, as demonstrated even in laboratory settings [10]. Not only does culture accumulate over time, but it adapts, diversifies,...

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“…Aligning orthologous genomic sequence from closely related species allowed the discovery of evolutionarily conserved sequences that might be important functional elements. The neutral theory of molecular evolution provides a framework for the identification of functional DNA sequences in genomes of different species (Kimura, 1968;King and Jukes, 1969). The neutral theory postulates that functionally important elements in genome sequences tend to evolve at a slower rate than do less important elements as we already observed in coding sequences of genes.…”

Section: Comparative Functional Genomicsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comparative and integrative functional genomics of HCC

2006

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Global gene expression profiling of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a promising new technology that has already refined the diagnosis and prognostic predictions of HCC patients. This has been accomplished by identifying genes whose expression pattern is associated with clinicopathological features of HCC tumors. Molecular characterization of HCC from gene expression profiling studies will undoubtedly improve the prediction of treatment responses, selection of treatments for specific molecular subtypes of HCC and ultimately the clinical outcome of HCC patients. The research focus is now shifting toward the identification of genetic determinants that are components of the specific regulatory pathways altered in cancers, and that may constitute novel therapeutic targets. Here we review the recent advances in gene expression profiling of HCC and discuss the future strategies for analysing large and complicated data sets from microarray studies and how to integrate these with diverse genomic data.

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Non-Darwinian Evolution

Cited by 1,591 publications

References 40 publications

Fixation of a deleterious allele at one of two "duplicate" loci by mutation pressure and random drift.

Fixation of a deleterious allele at one of two "duplicate" loci by mutation pressure and random drift.

An evolutionary framework for cultural change: Selectionism versus communal exchange

Comparative and integrative functional genomics of HCC

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