Evolutionary selection

Baines, A. J. (2003). Comprehensive analysis of all triple helical repeats in beta-spectrins reveals patterns of selective evolutionary conservation. Cell Mol. Biol. Lett. 8, 195-214. 

The system has to stay far from equilibrium, or better the turnover of the major constituents is not at equilibrium, where formation and decomposition would be microscopically reversible and detailed balance would hold. This requires a metabolism sustained by a supply of energy-rich monomeric building blocks of the polymeric constituents. (It should be stressed that at equilibrium the first two conditions are not sufficient to cause selective evolutionary self-organization.) As a consequence of microscopic reversibility, all eigenvalues will always turn out to be real and negative. 

Buss DM 1989 Sex differences in human mate selection evolutionary hypotheses tested in 37 cultures. Behav Brain Sci 12 1-49... 

IGF (insulin-like growth factors) group of closely related hormones, with important effects on sexual maturation, among many other effects, immunosuppression lowering of responsiveness of the immune system to antigens, individual selection evolutionary selection of traits that benefit individuals rather than populations. It is by far the most important form of natural selection. 

As an adaptive response, the modest overcompensa-tory response is therefore an expected one, rather than an extremely large one (e.g., more than three times the control response). Although this toxicological explanation is consistent with natural selection evolutionary theory, especially with respect to optimal resource... 

Darlington PJ Jr Nonmathematical concepts of selection, evolutionary energy, and levels of evolution. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1972, 69(5) 1239-1243. 

Sober, E., 1984, "The Nature of Selection Evolutionary Theory in Philosophical Focus," Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press., Cambridge, Mass. 

Bersini, H., Varela, F.J. The immune recruitment mechanism A selective evolutionary strategy. Technical Report IR/IRIDIA/91-5, Institut de Recherches Inter-disciplinaires et de Developpements en Intelligence Artificielle (1991)... 

The evolutionary process of a genetic algorithm is accomplished by genetic operators which translate the evolutionary concepts of selection, recombination or crossover, and mutation into data processing to solve an optimization problem dynamically. Possible solutions to the problem are coded as so-called artificial chromosomes, which are changed and adapted throughout the optimization process until an optimrun solution is obtained. 

GAs or other methods from evolutionary computation are applied in various fields of chemistry Its tasks include the geometry optimization of conformations of small molecules, the elaboration of models for the prediction of properties or biological activities, the design of molecules de novo, the analysis of the interaction of proteins and their ligands, or the selection of descriptors [18]. The last application is explained briefly in Section 9.7.6. 

Lonally, the templates were chosen by trial and error or exhaustive enumeration. A itafional method named ZEBEDDE (ZEolites By Evolutionary De novo DEsign) en developed to try to introduce some rationale into the selection of templates et al. 1996 Willock et al. 1997]. The templates are grown within the zeolite by an iterative inside-out approach, starting from a seed molecule. At each jn an action is randomly selected from a list that includes the addition of new (from a library of fragments), random translation or rotation, random bond rota-ing formation or energy minimisation of the template. A cost function based on erlap of van der Waals spheres is used to control the growth of the template ale ... 

AH these evolutionary methods foUow an initial synthesis method. The objective is to develop the best network design prior to the start of detailed and costiy calculation of individual network components. In practice, an approximate cost is usuaHy determined for the several candidates before one or more are selected for optimization. 

H Kubmyi. Variable selection m QSAR studies. I. An evolutionary algorithm. Quant Struct-Act Relat 13 285-294, 1994. 

The accommodation of some piece of evidence e by some theory T undoubtedly tells us something positive about T—namely that it is at least consistent with e. When, as sometimes happens, it begins to seem as if there is no possible explanation for some evidence within some theory, then even finding an accommodation of that evidence may give scientists more confidence in the theory. Something like this happened, for example, with Darwinian evolutionary theory and the widespread phenomenon of apparently altruistic behaviour—the consistency proof in that case coming in the form of the theories of kin selection and reciprocal altruism. 

Hydrophobicity plots of AQPs indicated that these proteins consist of six transmembrane a-helices (Hl-H6 in Fig. la) connected by five connecting loops (A-E), and flanked by cytosolic N- and C-termini. The second half of the molecule is an evolutionary duplicate and inverse orientation of the first half of the molecule. Loops B and E of the channel bend into the membrane with an a-helical conformation (HB, HE in Fig. lb) and meet and each other at their so-called Asn-Pro-Ala (NPA) boxes. These NPA motifs are the hallmark of AQPs and form the actual selective pore of the channel, as at this location, the diameter is of that of a water molecule (3 A Fig. la and b). Based on the narrowing of the channel from both membrane sides to this small... 

Because not all individuals in a population survive and reproduce equally well in a particular environment, some individuals contribute more offspring to subsequent generations than do other individuals. Such differential contribution of offspring resulting from variations in heritable traits was called natural selection by Charles Darwin. Natural selection is especially important because it is the only evolutionary agent that adapts organisms to their environments. 

Although natural selection is the only evolutionary agent that adapts organisms to their environments, the course of evolution has been profoundly influenced by major environmental changes, some of which had catastrophic effects. Some of these events resulted from Earth s internal processes, such as the activity of volcanoes and the shifting and colliding of continents. Others were the result of external events, such as collision of meteorites with Earth. 

As explained in Chapter 1, the toxicity of natural xenobiotics has exerted a selection pressure upon living organisms since very early in evolutionary history. There is abundant evidence of compounds produced by plants and animals that are toxic to species other than their own and which are nsed as chemical warfare agents (Chapter 1). Also, as we have seen, wild animals can develop resistance mechanisms to the toxic componnds prodnced by plants. In Anstralia, for example, some marsupials have developed resistance to natnrally occnrring toxins produced by the plants upon which they feed (see Chapter 1, Section 1.2.2). 

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