Adaptation of turnip mosaic potyvirus to a specific niche reduces its genetic and environmental robustness.

ABSTRACT: Robustness is the preservation of the phenotype in the face of genetic and environmental perturbations. It has been argued that robustness must be an essential fitness component of RNA viruses owed to their small and compacted genomes, high mutation rates and living in ever-changing environmental conditions. Given that genetic robustness might hamper possible beneficial mutations, it has been suggested that genetic robustness can only evolve as a side-effect of the evolution of robustness mechanisms specific to cope with environmental perturbations, a theory known as plastogenetic congruence. However, empirical evidences from different viral systems are contradictory. To test how adaptation to a particular environment affects both environmental and genetic robustness, we have used two stra

SUBMITTER: Butkovic A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7409916 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature