Adding levels of complexity enhances robustness and evolvability in a multilevel genotype-phenotype map.

ABSTRACT: Robustness and evolvability are the main properties that account for the stability and accessibility of phenotypes. They have been studied in a number of computational genotype-phenotype maps. In this paper, we study a metabolic genotype-phenotype map defined in toyLIFE, a multilevel computational model that represents a simplified cellular biology. toyLIFE includes several levels of phenotypic expression, from proteins to regulatory networks to metabolism. Our results show that toyLIFE shares many similarities with other seemingly unrelated computational genotype-phenotype maps. Thus, toyLIFE shows a high degeneracy in the mapping from genotypes to phenotypes, as well as a highly skewed distribution of phenotypic abundances. The neutral networks associated with abundant phenotypes are hig

SUBMITTER: Catalan P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5805960 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature