Synergistic Pleiotropy Overrides the Costs of Complexity in Viral Adaptation.

ABSTRACT: Adaptive evolution progresses as a series of steps toward a multidimensional phenotypic optimum, and organismal or environmental complexity determines the number of phenotypic dimensions, or traits, under selection. Populations evolving in complex environments may experience costs of complexity such that improvement in one or more traits is impeded by selection on others. We compared the fitness effects of the first fixed mutations for populations of single-stranded DNA bacteriophage evolving under simple selection for growth rate to those of populations evolving under more complex selection for growth rate as well as capsid stability. We detected a cost of complexity manifested as a smaller growth rate improvement for mutations fixed under complex conditions. We found that, despite imposi

SUBMITTER: McGee LW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4701092 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature