TITLE: Overlapping messages and survivability

SPEAKER: Alex Bolshoy

ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of overlapping of various sequence messages in genomes is a
puzzle for evolutionary theoreticians, geneticists and sequence researchers.
The overlapping is possible due to degeneracy of the messages, in
particular, degeneracy of codons. It is often observed in organisms with a
limited size of genome, possessing polymerases of low fidelity. The most
accepted view considers the overlapping of messages as a mechanism to
increase the amount of information per unit length. Here we present a model
that suggests direct evolutionary advantage of the message overlapping. Two
opposing drives are considered: a) reduction in the amount of vulnerable
points when the overlapping of two messages involves common critical points;
and b) cumulative compromising cost for enabling cohabitation of messages at
the same site. In a broad range of conditions the reduction of the target
size prevails, thus making the overlapping of messages advantageous.