Change of information content due to natural selection in populations with and without recombination

Abstract

Though evolution undoubtedly operates in accordance with the second law of thermodynamics, the law of disorder, during billions of years organisms of incredible complexity came into being. Natural selection was described by Darwin2 as a process of optimization of the adaptation to environment, but optimization doesnt necessarily lead to higher intricacy. Methods of thermodynamics and thus of information theory could be suited for the examination of the increase of order and information due to evolution. Here I explain how to quantify the increase of information due to natural selection on the genotype and gene level using the observable change of allele frequencies. In populations with recombination (no linkage), the change of information content can be computed by summing up the contributions of all gene loci and thus gene loci can be treated as independent no matter what the fitness-landscape looks like. Pressure of deleterious mutations decreases information in a linear way, proportional to fitness loss and mutation rate. The information theoretical view on evolution might open new fields of research.