Protein evolution on rugged landscapes.

Abstract
We analyze a mathematical model of protein evoluation in which the evolutionary process is viewed as hill-climbing on a random fitness landscape. In studying the structure of such landscapes, we note that a large number of local optima exist, and we calculate the time and number of mutational changes until a protein gests trapped at a local optimum. Such a hill-climbing process may underlie the evolution of antibody molecules by somatic hypermutation.