Horizontal gene transfer dynamics and distribution of fitness effects during microbial in silico evolution

BMC Bioinformatics

Table 1 Rate of adaptation to single environments A and B, and a complex XOR environment in different experimental scenarios

	Emergence of the organism with fitness w
	w > 0.75		w>0.90
	Success rate	Average speed, epochs	Success rate	Average speed, epochs
Un-evolved → XOR^a	18/32	2485	15/32	2489
Un-evolved → A^a	30/32	1043	29/32	1067
Un-evolved → B^a	31/32	1217	31/32	1319
{A &B} → XOR^b	58/64	234	47/64	448
{A &B} → XOR + HGT ^b	64/64	138	48/64	406
Acceleration of adaptation by HGT	1.7		1.1

The probability and the speed of XOR phenotype emergence are shown for two fitness thresholds 0.75 (evolved organism) and 0.90 (refined evolved organism). Probability is calculated as the ratio between the number of experiments with the maximum fitness above the threshold in the end of the run, to the total number of experiments. Average speed is the average epoch number at which maximum fitness surpasses the threshold (the speed calculated only for successful experiments, therefore it is overestimated for cases with a low adaptation probability).
^a 32 experiments; 4,000 epochs each.
^b 64 experiments; 2,000 epochs each.

ISSN: 1471-2105