Evolvability-enhancing mutations in the fitness landscapes of an RNA and a protein.

ABSTRACT: Can evolvability-the ability to produce adaptive heritable variation-itself evolve through adaptive Darwinian evolution? If so, then Darwinian evolution may help create the conditions that enable Darwinian evolution. Here I propose a framework that is suitable to address this question with available experimental data on adaptive landscapes. I introduce the notion of an evolvability-enhancing mutation, which increases the likelihood that subsequent mutations in an evolving organism, protein, or RNA molecule are adaptive. I search for such mutations in the experimentally characterized and combinatorially complete fitness landscapes of a protein and an RNA molecule. I find that such evolvability-enhancing mutations indeed exist. They constitute a small fraction of all mutations, which shift t

SUBMITTER: Wagner A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10279741 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature