Determinants of simulated RNA evolution.

Abstract excerpt

Models of RNA secondary structure folding are widely used to study evolution in theory and simulation. However, systematic studies of the parameters involved are rare. In this paper, we study by simulation how RNA evolution is influenced by three different factors, namely the mutation rate, scaling of the fitness function, and distance measure. We found that for low mutation rates the qualitative evolutionary...

Topics

• Animals
• Computer Simulation
• Evolution, Molecular
• Models, Genetic
• Mutation
• Nucleic Acid Conformation
• Origin of Life
• RNA
• Selection, Genetic
• Sequence Alignment