Physical Society Colloquium

Statistical Genetics and Dynamics of Natural Selection

Boris Shraiman

KITP
University of California, Santa Barbara

Evolution works through natural selection that acts on genetic variation. A mounting body of evidence suggests that large populations harbor a great deal of such “selectable” variation. This implies that in order to understand how genetic variants (a.k.a. polymorphisms) spread through populations, theoretical models must account for interactions between polymorphisms at different genetic loci and in different individuals. The problem is further encumbered by the effect of sex and recombination that reassort polymorphisms between individual genomes. Yet, this “many-body problem” of evolutionary dynamics lends itself to a “Statistical Genetics” approach with many parallels to Statistical Physics.

This lecture will present a statistical physicist's view of natural selection acting in populations with high levels of genetic diversity and describe some of the new insights into the effects of different genetic interactions.