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Title:
The complexity of neutrally evolving genomes

Presenter:
Peter F Arndt

Abstract:
Over millions of years, nucleotide mutations, insertion and deletion
of sequence segments, the insertion of transposable elements, genomic
rearrangements, and whole genome duplications, constantly changed
genomes to their present form. The interplay of these processes
generated genomes, which are highly complex with interesting
statistical features, e.g. long range correlations in their base
composition. Some of these changes are adaptive, i.e. they confer an
advantage or disadvantage to an organism, and are therefore under
selection. However most changes are thought to evolve neutrally, i.e.
they do not change the fitness of an individual to survive and
reproduce. We show that such neutral evolution can already explain a
variety of statistical features observed in genomes of higher
organisms.
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