István Zachar's scientific homepage

 

Scientific degree:  Ph.D.  
Employed at:  Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology
Budapest 1117 Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C
 
Status:  research assistant
Phone:  +36 1 372-2500 / 1707
Fax:  +36 1 381 2188
Email: 
   
ResearchGate:   
Google Scholar:   
ResearcherID:  P-5101-2015  
MTMT:  10018723  
StackExchange:  profile for István Zachar on Stack Exchange, a network of free, community-driven Q&A sites  

Research area

Prebiotics: origin of life, early template evolution and coexistence;

Evolution: origin of eukaryotes, origin of mitochondria, nucleogenesis; Major Evolutionary Transitions;

Culture: origin and early evolution of the human language, cultural evolution, origin and evolution syntax and grammar;

Learning: human cognitive processes, modelling learning, insight learning via neural models;

Thesis projects

Projects for BSc/MSc students

  • Origin of mitochondria.

  • Origin of phagocytosis in Archaea.

  • Origin of the prokaryotic cytoskeleton.

  • Trending Major Evolutionary Transitions.

Teaching

 

Publications

Most significant publications

2018 Zachar, I., Szilágyi, A., Számadó, S., & Szathmáry, E. Farming the mitochondrial ancestor as a model of endosymbiotic establishment by natural selection. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115, E1504-E1510. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1718707115. PDF
Access the recommendation on F1000Prime

2017 Zachar, I. & Szathmáry, E. Breath-giving cooperation: critical review of origin of mitochondria hypotheses. Biology Direct 12(1), doi: 10.1186/s13062-017-0190-5. PDF

2017 Szilágyi, A., Zachar, I., Scheuring, I.; Kun, Á.; Könnyű, B. & Czárán, T. Ecology and evolution in the RNA World: Dynamics and stability of prebiotic replicator systems. Life, 7. doi: 10.3390/life7040048. PDF

2016 Szilágyi, A., Zachar, I., Fedor, A., de Vladar, H. P. & Szathmáry, E. Breeding novel solutions in the brain: A model of Darwinian neurodynamics. F1000Research, 5. doi: 10.12688/f1000research.9630.1.

2015 Kun, Á., Szilágyi, A., Könnyű, B., Boza, G., Zachar, I. & Szathmáry, E. The dynamics of the RNA world: insights and challenges. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1341(1), 75–95. doi: 10.1111/nyas.12700. PDF

2011 Zachar, I. The feasibility of segmentation of protolanguage. Interaction Studies 12(1), 1–35. doi: 10.1075/is.12.1.01zac. PDF

2010 Zachar, I. & Szathmáry, E. A new replicator: A theoretical framework for analyzing replication. BMC Biology 8(21), 21. doi: 10.1186/1741-7007-8-21. PDF

Journal articles

2017 Fedor, A., Zachar, I., Szilágyi, A., Öllinger, M., de Vladar, H. P. & Szathmáry, E. Cognitive architecture with evolutionary dynamics solves insight problem. Frontiers in Psychology, 8(427). doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2015.06.047.

2016 de Vladar, H. P., Fedor, A., Szilágyi, A., Zachar, I. & Szathmáry, E. An attractor network-based model with Darwinian dynamics. Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference on Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GECCO '16). doi: 10.1145/2908961.2931672.

2015 Vasas, V., Fernando, C., Szilágyi, A., Zachar, I., Santos, M. and Szathmáry, E. Primordial evolvability: Impasses and challenges. Journal of Theoretical Biology doi: 10.1016/j.jtbi.2015.06.047. PDF

2015 Kun, Á., Szilágyi, A., Könnyű, B., Boza, G., Zachar, I. and Szathmáry, E. The dynamics of the RNA world: insights and challenges. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1341(1), 75–95. doi: 10.1111/nyas.12700. PDF

2013 Szilágyi, A., Zachar, I. and Szathmáry, E. Gause’s principle and the effect of resource partitioning on the dynamical coexistence of replicating templates. PLoS Computational Biology 9(8), e1003193. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003193. PDF

2011 Zachar, I. The feasibility of segmentation of protolanguage. Interaction Studies 12(1), 1–35. doi: 10.1075/is.12.1.01zac. PDF

2011 Zachar, I., Fedor, A. and Szathmáry, E. Two different template replicators coexisting in the same protocell: Stochastic simulation of an extended chemoton model. PLoS ONE 6(7), e21380. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0021380. PDF

2010 Zachar, I. and Szathmáry, E. A new replicator: A theoretical framework for analyzing replication. BMC Biology 8(21), 21. doi: 10.1186/1741-7007-8-21. PDF

Book chapters

2013 Zachar, I., Kun, Á., Fernando, C. and Szathmáry, E. Replicators: From molecules to organism. In: Kernbach, S. (ed.) Handbook of collective robotics: Fundamentals and challenges., ch. 13. Pan Stanford Publishing, Singapore, p. 473–501. doi: 10.13140/RG.2.1.2884.3606. PDF

2007 Szathmáry, E., Szatmáry, Z., Ittzés, P., Orbán, G., Zachar, I., Huszár, F., Fedor, A., Varga, M. and Számadó, Sz. In silico evolutionary developmental neurobiology and the origin of natural language. In: Lyon, C., Nehaniv, C. L. and Cangelosi, A. (ed.) Emergence of communication and language., ch. 8. Springer-Verlag New York, Inc., New York, p. 151–187. doi: 10.1007/978-1-84628-779-4_8. PDF

Theses

2011 Zachar, I. Replicator Formalism. A general account of replication. PhD thesis, Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Plant Systematics, Ecology and Theoretical Biology, Budapest. pp. 147. doi: 10.13140/RG.2.1.3981.5209. PDF

2004 Zachar, I. Identifying Tertiary Myliobatoids [in Hungarian]. MSc thesis, Eötvös Loránd University, Department of Paleontology, Budapest. pp. 49. doi: 10.13140/10.13140/RG.2.1.2687.7520. PDF