Gene Conversion Facilitates Adaptive Evolution on Rugged Fitness Landscapes.

ABSTRACT: Gene conversion is a ubiquitous phenomenon that leads to the exchange of genetic information between homologous DNA regions and maintains coevolving multi-gene families in most prokaryotic and eukaryotic organisms. In this paper, we study its implications for the evolution of a single functional gene with a silenced duplicate, using two different models of evolution on rugged fitness landscapes. Our analytical and numerical results show that, by helping to circumvent valleys of low fitness, gene conversion with a passive duplicate gene can cause a significant speedup of adaptation, which depends nontrivially on the frequency of gene conversion and the structure of the landscape. We find that stochastic effects due to finite population sizes further increase the likelihood of exploiting thi

SUBMITTER: Bittihn P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5714467 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature