Host-parasite coevolution promotes innovation through deformations in fitness landscapes.

ABSTRACT: During the struggle for survival, populations occasionally evolve new functions that give them access to untapped ecological opportunities. Theory suggests that coevolution between species can promote the evolution of such innovations by deforming fitness landscapes in ways that open new adaptive pathways. We directly tested this idea by using high-throughput gene editing-phenotyping technology (MAGE-Seq) to measure the fitness landscape of a virus, bacteriophage λ, as it coevolved with its host, the bacterium Escherichia coli. An analysis of the empirical fitness landscape revealed mutation-by-mutation-by-host-genotype interactions that demonstrate coevolution modified the contours of λ's landscape. Computer simulations of λ's evolution on a static versus shifting fitness landscape

SUBMITTER: Gupta A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9259030 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature