How many mutations does it take to evolve a new function?
Abstract
Biochemical and genetic networks in cells evolve to produce new functions. Evolution is guided by the genotype to phenotype map which describes how mutations at the molecular scale lead to changes in network function at the cellular scale. The number of genotypes is astronomically large which makes these maps very high dimensional. In this context, the simple question: How many mutations does it take to evolve a new function?, is usually hard to answer. Here we consider this question in the context of a simple Boolean-network model of a genotype-phenotype map. The nodes and edges of the Boolean network represent the genotype while the Boolean function the network computes is the phenotype. The network evolves by rewiring of its edges, while keeping the number of nodes fixed. We compute the number of mutations needed to achieve a new Boolean function as a function of the number of nodes in the network. We show that the number of mutations scales with the number of nodes of the network as a power-law with an exponent determined by local geometrical features of the genotype-phenotype map. Our theoretical study emphasizes the role of the genotype-phenotype map in determining the time to evolve a new function.
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BibTeX
@misc{farheen2026many,
title = {{How many mutations does it take to evolve a new function?}},
author = {Nida Farheen and Zachary Boroda and Ethan Levien and Jané Kondev},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.40635},
eprint = {2610.40635},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.40635},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - How many mutations does it take to evolve a new function?
AU - Nida Farheen
AU - Zachary Boroda
AU - Ethan Levien
AU - Jané Kondev
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/29
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.40635
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.40635
AB - Biochemical and genetic networks in cells evolve to produce new functions. Evolution is guided by the genotype to phenotype map which describes how mutations at the molecular scale lead to changes in network function at the cellular scale. The number of genotypes is astronomically large which makes these maps very high dimensional. In this context, the simple question: How many mutations does it take to evolve a new function?, is usually hard to answer. Here we consider this question in the context of a simple Boolean-network model of a genotype-phenotype map. The nodes and edges of the Boolean network represent the genotype while the Boolean function the network computes is the phenotype. The network evolves by rewiring of its edges, while keeping the number of nodes fixed. We compute the number of mutations needed to achieve a new Boolean function as a function of the number of nodes in the network. We show that the number of mutations scales with the number of nodes of the network as a power-law with an exponent determined by local geometrical features of the genotype-phenotype map. Our theoretical study emphasizes the role of the genotype-phenotype map in determining the time to evolve a new function.
ER -