Physics Colloquium, Boris Shraiman, KITP/UC Santa Barbara. Refreshments at 3:30pm.

Abstract: Evolution works through natural selection that acts on genetic variation and a mounting body of evidence suggests that large populations harbor a great deal of such “selectable” variation. This fact presents a challenge to the population genetics theory much of which traditionally assumed that beneficial mutations are rare and studied adaptation one genetic locus at a time. On the other hand, evolutionary dynamics driven by numerous weakly selected polymorphisms at different genetic loci lends itself to a “Statistical Genetics” approach with many useful parallels to Statistical Mechanics which help to tackle the “many-body” aspects of evolution.