IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v463y2010i7279d10.1038_nature08694.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Mutational robustness can facilitate adaptation

Author

Listed:
  • Jeremy A. Draghi

    (Department of Biology,)

  • Todd L. Parsons

    (Department of Biology,)

  • Günter P. Wagner

    (Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA)

  • Joshua B. Plotkin

    (Department of Biology,
    Program in Applied Mathematics and Computational Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, USA)

Abstract

A robust approach to flexibility The role of mutational robustness in evolution has been a topic of much debate and controversy. On the one hand, it would seem to impede adaptation by making it less easy for a new phenotype to develop in the event of environmental changes; on the other it is surely advantageous for an organism to buffer its phenotype against possibly unhelpful mutations. How can an organism handle this paradox, and be both robust and adaptable? A quantitative population genetics model gives a possible resolution to this problem, by showing that mutational robustness can either impede or facilitate adaptation, depending on the population size, the mutation rate and the structure of the fitness landscape.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeremy A. Draghi & Todd L. Parsons & Günter P. Wagner & Joshua B. Plotkin, 2010. "Mutational robustness can facilitate adaptation," Nature, Nature, vol. 463(7279), pages 353-355, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:463:y:2010:i:7279:d:10.1038_nature08694
    DOI: 10.1038/nature08694
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/nature08694
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/nature08694?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alexander J. Stewart & Joshua B. Plotkin, 2015. "The Evolvability of Cooperation under Local and Non-Local Mutations," Games, MDPI, vol. 6(3), pages 1-20, July.
    2. Proulx, Stephen R., 2011. "The rate of multi-step evolution in Moran and Wright–Fisher populations," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 80(3), pages 197-207.
    3. Zeina Shreif & Vipul Periwal, 2014. "A Network Characteristic That Correlates Environmental and Genetic Robustness," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 10(2), pages 1-23, February.
    4. Sam F Greenbury & Steffen Schaper & Sebastian E Ahnert & Ard A Louis, 2016. "Genetic Correlations Greatly Increase Mutational Robustness and Can Both Reduce and Enhance Evolvability," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(3), pages 1-27, March.
    5. Rigato, Emanuele & Fusco, Giuseppe, 2020. "A heuristic model of the effects of phenotypic robustness in adaptive evolution," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 136(C), pages 22-30.
    6. Alicia Sanchez-Gorostiaga & Djordje Bajić & Melisa L Osborne & Juan F Poyatos & Alvaro Sanchez, 2019. "High-order interactions distort the functional landscape of microbial consortia," PLOS Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(12), pages 1-34, December.
    7. Miguel A Fortuna & Luis Zaman & Charles Ofria & Andreas Wagner, 2017. "The genotype-phenotype map of an evolving digital organism," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(2), pages 1-20, February.
    8. Tobias Sikosek & Erich Bornberg-Bauer & Hue Sun Chan, 2012. "Evolutionary Dynamics on Protein Bi-stability Landscapes can Potentially Resolve Adaptive Conflicts," PLOS Computational Biology, Public Library of Science, vol. 8(9), pages 1-17, September.
    9. Rendel, Mark D., 2011. "Adaptive evolutionary walks require neutral intermediates in RNA fitness landscapes," Theoretical Population Biology, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 12-18.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:463:y:2010:i:7279:d:10.1038_nature08694. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.