| Issue |
EPL
Volume 123, Number 4, August 2018
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 48001 | |
| Number of page(s) | 7 | |
| Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/123/48001 | |
| Published online | 03 September 2018 | |
Rare beneficial mutations cannot halt Muller's ratchet in spatial populations(a)
1 Department of Physics, The Catholic University of Korea - 43 Jibong-ro, Bucheon 14662, Republic of Korea
2 Institut für Biologische Physik, Universität zu Köln - Zülpicher Str. 77, 50937 Köln, Germany
3 Heubeck AG - Gustav-Heinemann-Ufer 72a, 50968 Köln, Germany
Received: 22 June 2018
Accepted: 23 August 2018
Muller's ratchet describes the irreversible accumulation of deleterious mutations in asexual populations. In well-mixed populations the speed of fitness decline is exponentially small in the population size, and any positive rate of beneficial mutations is sufficient to reverse the ratchet in large populations. The behavior is fundamentally different in populations with spatial structure, because the speed of the ratchet remains nonzero in the infinite size limit when the deleterious mutation rate exceeds a critical value. Based on the relation between the spatial ratchet and directed percolation, we develop a scaling theory incorporating both deleterious and beneficial mutations. The theory is verified by extensive simulations in one and two dimensions.
PACS: 87.23.Kg – Dynamics of evolution / 64.60.Ht – Dynamic critical phenomena / 05.70.Ln – Nonequilibrium and irreversible thermodynamics
© EPLA, 2018
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