2010/10/31 by Ginestra Bianconi, Davide Fichera, Silvio Franz +1 · 7 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Social Sciences · #Champion #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Language and cultural evolution #Microevolution #Process (computing) #Process development #Viral quasispecies #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1742-5468/2011/08/p08022
published in Journal of Statistical Mechanics Theory and Experiment 2011(08), P08022 (Institute of Physics) · 15 pages, 12 figures. Figures redrawn, some additional clarifications in the text. To appear in Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment
arxiv created 2011/07/27 · openalex publication_date 2011/08/30 · arxiv updated 2011/08/31 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Several pathogens use evolvability as a survival strategy against acquired immunity of the host. Despite their high variability in time, some of them exhibit quite low variability within the population at any given time, a somewhat paradoxical behavior often called the evolving quasispecies. In this paper we introduce a simplified model of an evolving viral population in which the effects of the acquired immunity of the host are represented by the decrease of the fitness of the corresponding viral strains, depending on the frequency of the strain in the viral population. The model exhibits evolving quasispecies behavior in a certain range of its parameters, and suggests how punctuated evolution can be induced by a simple feedback mechanism.