EPFL BioE Talks SERIES "The Role of Deleterious Mutations in Structured Populations"
Event details
| Date | 06.10.2025 |
| Hour | 12:15 › 13:15 |
| Speaker | Prof. Joachim Krug, Institute for Biological Physics, University of Cologne (D) |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Conferences - Seminars |
| Event Language | English |
WEEKLY EPFL BIOE TALKS SERIES (sandwiches provided)
Abstract:
Population genetic theory for well-mixed populations posits that deleterious mutations have no appreciable role in the adaptation of large populations, because they are efficiently purged by natural selection. In this talk I will argue that this intuition is generally misguided when dealing with structured populations. I will present results of three case studies on spatial and graph-structured populations that exemplify the unusual evolutionary dynamics that can occur in these systems. Specifically, I will show that rare beneficial mutations cannot halt Muller's ratchet in spatial populations, and that strongly inhomogeneous graph structures may revert the direction of natural selection under mutation-selection balance, leading to the phenomenon of "survival of the weakest".
The talk is based on joint work with Su-Chan Park, Nikhil Sharma, Suman Das and Arne Traulsen.
Bio:
Joachim Krug studied physics in Göttingen and Munich, and received a doctoral degree in theoretical physics from the LMU Munich in 1989. After postdoctoral appointments at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights (NY) and Forschungszentrum Jülich, he became a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Essen in 1996. In 2004, he joined the University of Cologne, where he co-founded the Institute for Biological Physics in 2018. He has held visiting positions at the Danish Technical University, the Helsinki University of Technology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Florence and the University of Edinburgh. Krug has authored more than 200 publications covering a broad range of topics in statistical physics, theoretical population genetics and evolutionary biology. He is a PI within the Collaborative Research Center "Predictability in Evolution". His current research interests include the causes and consequences of epistatic interactions, models of fitness landscapes, and the evolution of antimicrobial resistance.
Zoom link (with one-time registration for the whole series) for attending remotely: https://go.epfl.ch/EPFLBioETalks
Instructions for 1st-year Ph.D. students planning to attend this talk, who are under EDBB’s mandatory seminar attendance rule:
IN CASE you cannot attend in-person in the room, please make sure to
Abstract:
Population genetic theory for well-mixed populations posits that deleterious mutations have no appreciable role in the adaptation of large populations, because they are efficiently purged by natural selection. In this talk I will argue that this intuition is generally misguided when dealing with structured populations. I will present results of three case studies on spatial and graph-structured populations that exemplify the unusual evolutionary dynamics that can occur in these systems. Specifically, I will show that rare beneficial mutations cannot halt Muller's ratchet in spatial populations, and that strongly inhomogeneous graph structures may revert the direction of natural selection under mutation-selection balance, leading to the phenomenon of "survival of the weakest".
The talk is based on joint work with Su-Chan Park, Nikhil Sharma, Suman Das and Arne Traulsen.
Bio:
Joachim Krug studied physics in Göttingen and Munich, and received a doctoral degree in theoretical physics from the LMU Munich in 1989. After postdoctoral appointments at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights (NY) and Forschungszentrum Jülich, he became a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Essen in 1996. In 2004, he joined the University of Cologne, where he co-founded the Institute for Biological Physics in 2018. He has held visiting positions at the Danish Technical University, the Helsinki University of Technology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the University of Florence and the University of Edinburgh. Krug has authored more than 200 publications covering a broad range of topics in statistical physics, theoretical population genetics and evolutionary biology. He is a PI within the Collaborative Research Center "Predictability in Evolution". His current research interests include the causes and consequences of epistatic interactions, models of fitness landscapes, and the evolution of antimicrobial resistance.
Zoom link (with one-time registration for the whole series) for attending remotely: https://go.epfl.ch/EPFLBioETalks
Instructions for 1st-year Ph.D. students planning to attend this talk, who are under EDBB’s mandatory seminar attendance rule:
IN CASE you cannot attend in-person in the room, please make sure to
- send D. Reinhard a note well ahead of time (ideally before seminar day), informing that you plan to attend the talk online, and, during seminar:
- be signed in on Zoom with a recognizable user name (not any alias making it difficult or impossible to identify you).
Practical information
- Informed public
- Registration required
Organizer
- Prof. Anne-Florence Bitbol, Institute of Bioengineering
Contact
- Institute of Bioengineering (IBI), Dietrich REINHARD