« Mutations are wonderful mistakes in nature » – DiePresse.com
Mathematics is a powerful tool in climate research and evolutionary biology. A team from the Boku Vienna creates models that predict the survival of populations, analyze family trees and have to do with sperm banks in the desert.
Examination. This not only appears as a dubious pop-up advertising on the Internet or employs people who examine their own origin. Research into populations of the past is also relevant in evolutionary biology and plays into climate research: How do animal and plant species develop over generations? Which environmental factors influence the gene material of these organisms?
Mathematics are needed to answer such questions. Fernando Cordero recently got on the Boku Vienna the Chair « Mathematics » Started and calculated with simplified models, what happens when chance intervenes in the genome of living beings. « Since Darwin, we have known that chance is a lot to do in which direction a population is developing, » says Cordero, who comes from Chile and researched in Vienna, Paris and Bielefeld.
From share prices to biology
His station on the University of Vienna 15 years ago there was little to do with life sciences: « As a post -doc, I was in financial mathematics. » However, his specialty of probability theory was also required apart from financial models. This is how Cordero started in 2013 at the University of Bielefeld With population genetics: According to the calculations of transaction costs in the financial market and overhoot forecasts of exchange courses, the methods of Cordero helped to understand how mutation, selection and evolution run.
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»It can be disasters such as drought, hurricane, floods or
Lack of food. »Fernando Cordero,
Mathematician, Boku Vienna
« Mutations are wonderful mistakes in nature! », Enthuses Cordero. Coincidence determines where a gene is converted and the sum of many mutations encounters the change in species. A new species arises when random mutations lead to the living beings better adapted to the environmental conditions.
This is also central to Darwin: « The Survival of the Fittest » Was often incorrectly translated as « the survival of the strongest ». It is said that they prevail that is best adapted. Corderos calculations are approaching scenarios with abrupt changes to the environment. « This can be different disasters such as heat, drought, hurricanes, floods or lack of food, » says the mathematician.
When resources become scarce, the competition between living beings starts, it is fought for food, nesting places or territories. « We create models for regularly occurring disasters that have a similar intensity every time, » says Cordero. On the other hand, simulations for the consequences of climate change in other research groups need to approach, which work with continuous changes, for example a constant increase in temperature.
What happens after disasters?
The calculations in Cordero’s team at the Boku assume individuals who either have gene variant A or gen variant B: only one of them is better adapted to the catastrophe. With this scenario, the genetic material prevails over generations, which can better cope with the abrupt changes. « But what if a population has to deal with very hot summers and very cold winters? Then two different gent types can establish themselves, » says Cordero. So the population may split into new units: some are then better adapted to the heat of the summer, the others better in the cold of winter. Such processes may result in two separate species in the course of evolution.
« We make forward and backward models, » says Cordero. On the one hand, the models look into the future to make forecasts, and on the other hand refer to the past and analyze family trees. This is almost ancestral research in his Research group.
Family tree woven like a carpet
« The more variants a gene has, the more complex the family trees become, » says Cordero. The picture is actually no longer a tree, but a wildly networked carpet, in which an ups and downs of Gentype is visible between many generations. « This makes family tree research very complicated: these graphs are huge objects with strong inner structures. » Therefore, quite different mathematical approaches are used: graph theory, probability theory or analysis techniques. The researchers combine all of this with the work of Darwin and Mendel, who have described evolution and inheritance.
In the case of conferences and conferences, the research of Cordero is always of interest, not only from the small circle of mathematics nerds, but in all fields, use the models for forecasts and the history of origin. The method of reproduction of animal and plant species also plays into its models: do certain individuals multiply more than others? Do spores or seeds of a plant community help to survive disasters? « The models of us are universally laid out and not geared towards specific case studies, » explains Cordero. For which calculation his works will later be helpful in other groups, he rarely experiences – rather only by chance in conversations at interdisciplinary conferences.
Hibernation and sperm bank
For Corderos Current projects, for example, researchers on the biology of hibernation or the spread of seed plants could be interested. It illuminates the phenomenon of the dormance from a mathematical point of view. « Dormance describes the ability of individuals to go into a state of idle, » says the scientist: « They go to sleep and escape the pressure of selection. »
« /> Siebenläfer are a well -known example of animals that avoid the lack of food through hibernation in the cold period. Vetmed uni
An example is hibernation, which avoids many animal species to print the lack of food and the cold. « So-called seed banks, seed banks, which accumulate in the desert floor and only bloom when the conditions for plant growth are good, are also important, » says Cordero, who refers to the Chilean Atacama desert: « There it blooms like in a large, colorful garden as soon as the rain comes. » The seeds are in Dormance in the inhospitable time, and Cordero’s model combines this state with the genetics behind it.
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