Physics of Evolution

We have an exciting opportunity to use the methods of 'noisy physics' at the molecular level to explore the physics of evolution itself, asking the question. 'How does nature search for, and find solutions?' Completing the circle of this research theme, we are constructing theories for the evolution of the sticky proteins themselves.

A third stream of work takes the idea of random motion but now at the higher level of evolution itself. The search for the protein structures that deliver the binding properties of signalling and silk takes place in an unimaginably vast space of possibilities coded by the organism's genome. Random jumps in this space, like the random motions of the proteins themselves, somehow serve to find solutions, rather than frustrate them.

T.C.B. McLeish, ‘Are there ergodic limits to evolution? Ergodic exploration of genome space and convergence’, J. Roy. Soc. Interface Focus, 20150041 (2015)

B.S. Khatri, T.C.B. McLeish and R.P. Sear, “Statistical mechanics of convergent evolution in spatial patterning”, PNAS, 106, 9564-9569 (2009)