Neutral evolution of robustness in Drosophila microRNA precursors.

ABSTRACT: Mutational robustness describes the extent to which a phenotype remains unchanged in the face of mutations. Theory predicts that the strength of direct selection for mutational robustness is at most the magnitude of the rate of deleterious mutation. As far as nucleic acid sequences are concerned, only long sequences in organisms with high deleterious mutation rates and large population sizes are expected to evolve mutational robustness. Surprisingly, recent studies have concluded that molecules that meet none of these conditions--the microRNA precursors (pre-miRNAs) of multicellular eukaryotes--show signs of selection for mutational and/or environmental robustness. To resolve the apparent disagreement between theory and these studies, we have reconstructed the evolutionary history of Droso

SUBMITTER: Price N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3167684 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature