Publication Date:
2010-01-22
Description:
Robustness seems to be the opposite of evolvability. If phenotypes are robust against mutation, we might expect that a population will have difficulty adapting to an environmental change, as several studies have suggested. However, other studies contend that robust organisms are more adaptable. A quantitative understanding of the relationship between robustness and evolvability will help resolve these conflicting reports and will clarify outstanding problems in molecular and experimental evolution, evolutionary developmental biology and protein engineering. Here we demonstrate, using a general population genetics model, that mutational robustness can either impede or facilitate adaptation, depending on the population size, the mutation rate and the structure of the fitness landscape. In particular, neutral diversity in a robust population can accelerate adaptation as long as the number of phenotypes accessible to an individual by mutation is smaller than the total number of phenotypes in the fitness landscape. These results provide a quantitative resolution to a significant ambiguity in evolutionary theory.〈br /〉〈br /〉〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3071712/" target="_blank"〉〈img src="https://static.pubmed.gov/portal/portal3rc.fcgi/4089621/img/3977009" border="0"〉〈/a〉 〈a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3071712/" target="_blank"〉This paper as free author manuscript - peer-reviewed and accepted for publication〈/a〉〈br /〉〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Draghi, Jeremy A -- Parsons, Todd L -- Wagner, Gunter P -- Plotkin, Joshua B -- 2U54AI057168/AI/NIAID NIH HHS/ -- U54 AI057168/AI/NIAID NIH HHS/ -- U54 AI057168-06S1/AI/NIAID NIH HHS/ -- England -- Nature. 2010 Jan 21;463(7279):353-5. doi: 10.1038/nature08694.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Biology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20090752" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Adaptation, Physiological/*genetics
;
*Biological Evolution
;
Genetic Fitness/genetics
;
Genetic Variation/genetics
;
Genetics, Population
;
Genotype
;
Models, Genetic
;
Mutagenesis/*genetics
;
Mutation/*genetics
;
Phenotype
;
Population Density
;
Time Factors
Print ISSN:
0028-0836
Electronic ISSN:
1476-4687
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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