%0 Journal Article
%T Recombination dramatically speeds up evolution of finite populations
%A Elisheva Cohen
%A David A. Kessler
%A Herbert Levine
%J Quantitative Biology
%D 2004
%I arXiv
%R 10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.098102
%X We study the role of recombination, as practiced by genetically-competent bacteria, in speeding up Darwinian evolution. This is done by adding a new process to a previously-studied Markov model of evolution on a smooth fitness landscape; this new process allows alleles to be exchanged with those in the surrounding medium. Our results, both numerical and analytic, indicate that for a wide range of intermediate population sizes, recombination dramatically speeds up the evolutionary advance.
%U http://arxiv.org/abs/q-bio/0410015v1