The Book of Mormon as a Quasispecies

Sometimes it's fun to find commonality between otherwise unrelated things.

One of the problems faced by all organisms is the need to replicate their genetic code with fidelity. Too many mutation can be lethal. The enzymes that replicate genomes occasionally make errors, and many organisms have proof-reading enzymes that help to identify and correct mistakes. However, many viruses, such as HIV, get by without this proof-reading ability. In fact, the lack of proof-reading is actually advantageous to them because mutations help to keep them nimble in the face of the onslaught of the immune system.

If you were to chemically synthesize the genome of one of these viruses (so that you knew the precise genetic sequence), introduce it into a host, and then sequence the genomes of the progeny virus. You would find lots of variants from the original genome sequence. In fact, there is a sense in which the virus does not have a single genome sequence. Rather, the virus exists as a cloud of variant sequences called a 'quasispecies.'

The quasispecies concept is a model rooted in mathematics, and although many virologists are familiar with the term, my sense is that most don't really understand the mathematical underpinnings. (Neither do I.) Nevertheless, the quasispecies model has interesting implications. Some mutations are advantageous and some are deleterious, and we usually think of natural selection as weeding out unfit individuals and promoting the more fit ones. However, in the quasispecies model selection acts on the cloud of variants as a unit, and it's possible for a cloud of less-fit genomes to out-compete a single, more-fit genome. And if you were to align the sequences of all of the individual genomes and create a consensus sequence by using a majority vote at each position, you might find that the consensus sequence is not represented in any individual genome.

The 1830 edition of the Book of Mormon is kind of like a quasispecies because it turns out that it is not a single text. As the sheets were being printed, mistakes--both human and mechanical--were noticed and corrected. At least 41 changes are known. However, the already printed sheets were not discarded, and so there was a mixing of mistakes which were scattered throughout the 5,000 finished copies. It's possible that you could come up with a consensus text that is not found in any single copy.

There's no profound meaning here--I guess that's about the extent of the similarities. I just figured that introducing the quasispecies concept along with Book of Mormon trivia was more fun than doing them independently.

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