Environment-dependent epistasis increases phenotypic diversity in gene regulatory networks.

ABSTRACT: Mutations to gene regulatory networks can be maladaptive or a source of evolutionary novelty. Epistasis confounds our understanding of how mutations affect the expression patterns of gene regulatory networks, a challenge exacerbated by the dependence of epistasis on the environment. We used the toolkit of synthetic biology to systematically assay the effects of pairwise and triplet combinations of mutant genotypes on the expression pattern of a gene regulatory network expressed in Escherichia coli that interprets an inducer gradient across a spatial domain. We uncovered a preponderance of epistasis that can switch in magnitude and sign across the inducer gradient to produce a greater diversity of expression pattern phenotypes than would be possible in the absence of such environment

SUBMITTER: Baier F 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10208579 | biostudies-literature | 2023 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature