Etiology of phenotype switching strategy in time varying stochastic environment

In the paper, we present the two-state discrete-time Markovian model to study the impact of the two alternative switching strategies on the fitness of the population evolving in time varying environment. The first strategy, referred as the ‘responsive switching’, enables the cell to make transition into the state conferring to it higher fitness in the instant environment. If the alternative strategy, termed ‘random switching’ is applied, the cell undergoes transition into the new state not regarding the instant environment. Each strategy comes with the respective cost for its physical realization. Within the framework of evolutionary model, mutations occur as random events which change parameters of the probabilistic models corresponding to the respective switching strategies. Most of the general trends of population averages can be easily understood at the intuitive level, with a few exceptions related to the cases when too low mutation noise hampers population to follow rapid environmental changes. On the other hand, the more detailed study of the parameter distributions reveals much more complex structure than expected. The simulation results may help to understand, at the conceptual level, relation between the population heterogeneity and its environment that could find important implications in various areas, such as cancer therapy or development of risk diversifying strategies.