Genetic Correlations Greatly Increase Mutational Robustness and Can Both Reduce and Enhance Evolvability.

ABSTRACT: Mutational neighbourhoods in genotype-phenotype (GP) maps are widely believed to be more likely to share characteristics than expected from random chance. Such genetic correlations should strongly influence evolutionary dynamics. We explore and quantify these intuitions by comparing three GP maps-a model for RNA secondary structure, the HP model for protein tertiary structure, and the Polyomino model for protein quaternary structure-to a simple random null model that maintains the number of genotypes mapping to each phenotype, but assigns genotypes randomly. The mutational neighbourhood of a genotype in these GP maps is much more likely to contain genotypes mapping to the same phenotype than in the random null model. Such neutral correlations can be quantified by the robustness to mutation

SUBMITTER: Greenbury SF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4777517 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature