Long-term dynamics of adaptation in asexual populations

摘要: Experimental studies of evolution have increased greatly in number recent years, stimulated by the growing power genomic tools. However, organismal fitness remains ultimate metric for interpreting these experiments, and dynamics remain poorly understood over long time scales. Here, we examine trajectories 12 Escherichia coli populations during 50,000 generations. Mean appears to increase without bound, consistent with a law. We also derive this power-law relation theoretically incorporating clonal interference diminishing-returns epistasis into dynamical model changes mean time.