Favorable epistasis in ancestral diterpene synthases promoted convergent evolution of a resin acid precursor in conifers.

ABSTRACT: A long-standing question in biology is what makes evolution more or less repeatable. Although evolution seems repeatable when observing convergent phenotypic outcomes, each episode of convergence could have been contingent on an idiosyncratic history that is not expected to repeat. Overlooking events that preceded convergent episodes therefore risks overestimating repeatability. Here, we demonstrate using resurrected ancestral proteins that the evolution of a characteristic diterpene resin acid precursor, isopimaradiene, became especially repeatable in conifers following genetic divergence that simultaneously changed the effects of phenotype-altering substitutions in diterpene synthase enzymes. We found that millions of years of epistatic change prior to three genus-level episodes of conve

SUBMITTER: O'Donnell AJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12501191 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature