Population extinction in genetic algorithms: Application in evolutionary studies

Abstract

A key topic in population genetics is modeling the effect of population size on patterns of genome evolution. Here, we analyze a simple genetic algorithm which population size varies in time. We call this algorithm the genetic survival algorithm (GSA) that differs from the classical simple genetic algorithm just in that the selection model implies absolute fitness evaluation i.e. the individual survival does not depend onto the mean population fitness. It is shown that GSA provides an adequate model to study the evolution of multi-drug resistance in HIV-1 virus under anti-retroviral therapy. © 2009 Springer Berlin Heidelberg.