  Gene sequences of a deme evolve over time as new chromosome inversions appear
in a population via mutations, some of which will replace an existing sequence.
The underlying biochemical processes that generates these and other mutations
are governed by the laws of thermodynamics, although the connection between
thermodynamics and the generation and propagation of mutations are often
neglected. Here, chromosome inversions are modeled as a specific example of
mutations in an evolving system. The thermodynamic concepts of chemical
potential, energy, and temperature are linked to the input parameters that
include inversion rate, recombination loss rate and deme size. An energy
barrier to existing gene sequence replacement is a natural consequence of the
model. Finally, the model calculations are compared to the observed chromosome
inversion distribution of the Lachancea genus of yeast. The model introduced in
this work should be applicable to other types of mutations in evolving systems.
