Analysis of epistatic interactions and fitness landscapes using a new geometric approach.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Understanding interactions between mutations and how they affect fitness is a central problem in evolutionary biology that bears on such fundamental issues as the structure of fitness landscapes and the evolution of sex. To date, analyses of fitness landscapes have focused either on the overall directional curvature of the fitness landscape or on the distribution of pairwise interactions. In this paper, we propose and employ a new mathematical approach that allows a more complete description of multi-way interactions and provides new insights into the structure of fitness landscapes. RESULTS:We apply the mathematical theory of gene interactions developed by Beerenwinkel et al. to a fitness landscape for Escherichia coli obtained by Elena and Lenski. The genotypes were constructe

SUBMITTER: Beerenwinkel N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC1865543 | biostudies-literature | 2007 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature