Reciprocal sign epistasis between frequently experimentally evolved adaptive mutations causes a rugged fitness landscape.

ABSTRACT: The fitness landscape captures the relationship between genotype and evolutionary fitness and is a pervasive metaphor used to describe the possible evolutionary trajectories of adaptation. However, little is known about the actual shape of fitness landscapes, including whether valleys of low fitness create local fitness optima, acting as barriers to adaptive change. Here we provide evidence of a rugged molecular fitness landscape arising during an evolution experiment in an asexual population of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. We identify the mutations that arose during the evolution using whole-genome sequencing and use competitive fitness assays to describe the mutations individually responsible for adaptation. In addition, we find that a fitness valley between two adaptive mutations in the ge

SUBMITTER: Kvitek DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3084205 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature