Natural Selection

Variation

Natural Selection

Variation

Heredity

Natural Selection

Variation

Heredity

Differential Survival

4

Fitness Landscape

Sewell Wright (1899-1988)

Multi-dimensional spaces

{x,y,z}

{x,y,z,a,b,c,d,e}Generalize to:

Multi-dimensional spaces

{x,y,z}

{x,y,z,a,b,c,d,e}Generalize to:

Show K-means model

7

Fisher’s Fundamental Theorem

R. A. Fisher's so-called fundamental theorem of natural selection:

"The rate of increase in fitness of any organism at any time is equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time."[1]

Or, in more modern terminology:

"The rate of increase in the mean fitness of any organism at any time ascribable to natural selection acting through

changes in gene frequencies is exactly equal to its genetic variance in fitness at that time".[2]

Ronald Fisher (1890-1962)

Information and Matter

Natural history

Evolvability

Modularity: Evo Devo

Evolution of Cooperation/Eusociality

DNA

DNA

Transcription

Translation

Notion of “gene expression”

Epigenetics

From Wikipedia:

“Epigenetics is the study of heritable changes in gene expression or cellular phenotype caused by mechanisms other than changes in the underlying DNA sequence.”

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/body/epigenetics.html

Is epigenetics why cloned animals don’t fare well?

Genetic regulation

Genetic Switches (in “non-expressed” regions)

Lac Operon

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBwtxdI1zvk

Genetic Regulatory Networks

Random Boolean Networksas models of genetic regulatory

networks