Evolutionary Principles of Genomic Compression

David C. Krakauer

02-05-021

One of the most remarkable features of life on earth is its diversity. A notable feature of Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, is that it nowhere provides any explanation for the expected range of diversity, or of those biological laws, that might operate to constrain natural diversity. One way in which to do this, is to substitute diversity in life form, with diversity in genome size. The questions that I shall address in this paper all relate to those pressures and constraints favoring small genome sizes, in particular adaptive theories that seek to explain how a given quantity of information can come to be represented by a small message. In other words I seek to discuss mechanisms for compressing genetic information.