Nothing is more fundamental to life than the ability to reproduce and duplicate theinformation cells store in their genomes. The mechanism of duplication of DNA has beenconserved from prokaryotes to eukaryotes. The aim of the study was to quantify whichevolutionary forces could produce the pattern of genome replication architecture observedin present-day organisms. This was achieved using an evolutionary simulation, combiningrandom genome sequence shuffling, mutation, selection and the mathematical modeling of DNAreplication. We have found parameter values which explained evolutionary pressures of DNAreplication in E.coli, P.calidifontis and S.cerevisae. Surprisingly, the results of the evolutionary simulation suggeststhat for a fixed cost per replication origin it is more advantageous for genomes to reducethe number of replication origins under increasing uncertainty in origin activationtiming.
