Evolvability is a Selectable Trait
arXiv:q-bio/0407012 · doi:10.1073/pnas.0404656101
Abstract
Concomitant with the evolution of biological diversity must have been the evolution of mechanisms that facilitate evolution, due to the essentially infinite complexity of protein sequence space. We describe how evolvability can be an object of Darwinian selection, emphasizing the collective nature of the process. We quantify our theory with computer simulations of protein evolution. These simulations demonstrate that rapid or dramatic environmental change leads to selection for greater evolvability. The selective pressure for large scale genetic moves, such as DNA exchange, becomes increasingly strong as the environmental conditions become more uncertain. Our results demonstrate that evolvability is a selectable trait and allow for the explanation of a large body of experimental results.
21 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
References in corpus (1)
Cited by in corpus (28)
- Life is physics: evolution as a collective phenomenon far from equilibrium
- Spontaneous Emergence of Modularity in a Model of Evolving Individuals
- Cancer stem cells display extremely large evolvability: alternating plastic and rigid networks as a potential mechanism
- Evolvability Is Inevitable: Increasing Evolvability Without the Pressure to Adapt
- Control of critical behavior in a small-scale social system
- Quasispecies theory for finite populations
- The effect of scale-free topology on the robustness and evolvability of genetic regulatory networks
- Evolving generalists via dynamic sculpting of rugged landscapes
- Spontaneous Emergence of Modularity in a Model of Evolving Individuals and in Real Networks
- Ageing as a price of cooperation and complexity: Self-organization of complex systems causes the ageing of constituent networks
- Glassy Dynamics in the Adaptive Immune Response Prevents Autoimmune Disease
- Emergence of species in evolutionary simulated annealing
- System level mechanisms of adaptation, learning, memory formation and evolvability: the role of chaperone and other networks
- The dynamics of gene duplication and transposons in microbial genomes following a sudden environmental change
- On the accessibility of adaptive phenotypes of a bacterial metabolic network
- Gray-box optimization and factorized distribution algorithms: where two worlds collide
- Plasticity-rigidity cycles: A general adaptation mechanism
- Tradeoff between short-term and long-term adaptation in a changing environment
- Evolvability tradeoffs in emergent digital replicators
- Evolution: Life has Evolved to Evolve
- Quantum Biology at the Cellular Level - elements of the research program
- Natural selection at multiple scales
- Statistical Mechanics of Integral Membrane Protein Assembly
- Optimization Aspects of Carcinogenesis
- Conjugate Distribution Laws in Cultural Evolution via Statistical Learning
- Shifting gears: Thermodynamics of genetic information storage suggest stress-dependence of mutation rate, which can accelerate adaptation
- Theoretical Aspects of Immunity
- A Multi-Scale Model for Correlation in B Cell VDJ Usage of Zebrafish