Evolutionary Strategies and the Optimization of Carrier Models

Abstract

A very interesting question in the study of molecular systems concerns the principles of their design. Since the overall evolutionary fitness of an organism is, to a varying degree, a function of all kinds of catalytic proteins, selection pressure acts not only at the systemic level but also at the level of individual proteins. Consequently, present-day catalytic systems may be optimized with respect to one or several qualities. One approach to investigate such a kind of natural selection is to apply mathematical optimizing techniques to appropriate models of the systems under investigation^1–4. In addition to our previous work⁵ we tested different algorithms based on the theory of evolutionary strategies⁶ with respect to the optimization of special qualities of the kinetic models for 2 particular mechanisms of a two-substrate symport, and for an active carrier mediated transport driven by dynamic asymmetry.