Scientists Find 'Pure Math' At Work in Evolutionary Genetics

Scientists Find 'Pure Math' At Work in Evolutionary Genetics

Scientists Find 'Pure Math' , At Work in Evolutionary Genetics.

ScienceAlert reports that researchers have uncovered one of the purest forms of math, number theory, at work in the mechanisms governing molecular evolution.

Number theory includes multiplication, subtraction, division and addition of integers and their negative counterparts.

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One example would be the Fibonacci sequence, found throughout nature, where each number in the sequence is the sum of the two numbers preceeding it.

The beauty of number theory lies not only in the abstract relationships it uncovers between integers, but also in the deep mathematical structures it illuminates in our natural world, Ard Louis, Senior author and mathematician at Oxford University, via ScienceAlert.

The beauty of number theory lies not only in the abstract relationships it uncovers between integers, but also in the deep mathematical structures it illuminates in our natural world, Ard Louis, Senior author and mathematician at Oxford University, via ScienceAlert.

The beauty of number theory lies not only in the abstract relationships it uncovers between integers, but also in the deep mathematical structures it illuminates in our natural world, Ard Louis, Senior author and mathematician at Oxford University, via ScienceAlert.

The team ran numerical simulations to determine the upper bounds of mutational robustness, a process which generates genetic diversity.

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We have known for some time that many biological systems exhibit remarkably high phenotype robustness, without which evolution would not be possible.

But we didn't know what the absolute maximal robustness possible would be, or if there even was a maximum, Ard Louis, Senior author and mathematician at Oxford University, via ScienceAlert.

ScienceAlert reports that the team found that maximum robustness follows a self-repeating fractal pattern called a Blancmange curve.

The maximum was proportional to the sum-of-digits fraction, a basic concept of number theory.

We found clear evidence in the mapping from sequences to RNA secondary structures that nature in some cases achieves the exact maximum robustness bound.

It's as if biology knows about the fractal sums-of-digits function, Vaibhav Mohanty, Harvard Medical School, via ScienceAlert.

We found clear evidence in the mapping from sequences to RNA secondary structures that nature in some cases achieves the exact maximum robustness bound.

It's as if biology knows about the fractal sums-of-digits function, Vaibhav Mohanty, Harvard Medical School, via ScienceAlert.

The team's findings were published in the 'Journal of The Royal Society Interface.'