Isn the standard Ev mutation rate of one base change per genome per generation excessive?
No. If you think about it (or try it yourself) you will see that if you slow it down you get the same results: Rsequence still will evolve towards Rfrequency. Of course it will take longer to get the results. • Isn’t the Ev mutation rate much higher than natural rates? It’s only 10 fold faster than HIV. Interestingly, there are mutations in the bacteriophage T4 DNA polymerase that reduce mutation rates. So the rate of mutation is itself under evolutionary control (though not in the ev program). • Won’t a slower evolution take too long in nature? No. For practical reasons we usually use a tiny population in Ev, generally only 16 organisms. In nature there are usually populations of millions. For example, in the lab a single cubic centimeter (ml, a milliliter) of E. coli culture can easily contain 108 bacteria. (That’s 100 million.) With an error rate of one in 106 (i.e., one in a million) at each genetic location, there will be plenty of variation to drive evolution. Notice that we have
