Abstract
By reasonable criteria, life on the Earth consists mainly of molecular replicators. These include viruses, transposons, transpovirons, coviruses and many more, with continuous new discoveries like Sputnik Virophage. Their study is inherently multidisciplinary, spanning microbiology, genetics, immunology and evolutionary theory, and the current view is that taking a unified approach has great power and promise. We support this with a new, unified, model of their evolutionary ecology, using contemporary evolutionary theory coupling the Price equation with game theory, studying the consequences of the molecular replicators' promiscuous use of each others' gene products for their natural history and evolutionary ecology. Even at this simple expository level, we can make a firm prediction of a new class of replicators exploiting viruses such as lentiviruses like SIVs, a family which includes HIV: these have been explicitly stated in the primary literature to be non-existent. Closely connected to this departure is the view that multicellular organism immunology is more about the management of chronic infections rather than the elimination of acute ones and new understandings emerging are changing our view of the kind of theatre we ourselves provide for the evolutionary play of molecular replicators. This study adds molecular replicators to bacteria in the emerging field of sociomicrobiology.
Highlights
The implications of promiscuous exchange of information for untangling the evolutionary history of molecular replicators, even between viruses and transposons inhabiting the three different domains of life, is currently under active review and development [1]
We present a simple model for an evolutionary game played by molecular replicators which is based on the trade-off between investment in making (i) copies of the genetic
These constitute a new, unified model for use in understanding molecular replicators. Both sections will combine the presentation of theoretical ideas in conjunction with empirical generalizations. This treatment combination is needed because of the inherently multidisciplinary subject matter of the evolutionary ecology of molecular replicators, which spans the molecular biology of virology, genetics, immunology and the current statistical theories of evolutionary biology
Summary
The implications of promiscuous exchange of information for untangling the evolutionary history of molecular replicators, even between viruses and transposons inhabiting the three different domains of life, is currently under active review and development [1]. Information of the replicator and (ii) the machinery needed to do the copying This is primarily an evolutionary model exploiting the fusion of evolutionary game theory—evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs)—and the Price equation [4,5,6]. We present an elaboration of the model to allow specialization, in which molecular replicators rely on each other for essential gene products These constitute a new, unified model for use in understanding molecular replicators Both sections will combine the presentation of theoretical ideas in conjunction with empirical generalizations. This treatment combination is needed because of the inherently multidisciplinary subject matter of the evolutionary ecology of molecular replicators, which spans the molecular biology of virology, genetics, immunology and the current statistical theories of evolutionary biology. Our unequivocal view is that, in particular, molecular parasites of lentiviruses like SIV do exist, as yet undiscovered, and the reasons for this highlight the multidisciplinary nature of the study
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