Journal
FRONTIERS IN GENETICS
Volume 6, Issue -, Pages -Publisher
FRONTIERS MEDIA SA
DOI: 10.3389/fgene.2015.00099
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- European Research Council (ERC) [310944] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
- European Research Council [310944] Funding Source: Medline
Ask authors/readers for more resources
One of the most recurrent observations after two decades of microbial evolution experiments regards the dynamics of fitness change. In a given environment, low-fitness genotypes are recurrently observed to adapt faster than their more fit counterparts. Since adaptation is the main macroscopic outcome of Darwinian evolution, studying its patterns of change could potentially provide insight into key issues of evolutionary theory, from fixation dynamics to the genetic architecture of organisms. Here, we re-analyze several published datasets from experimental evolution with microbes and show that, despite large differences in the origin of the data, a pattern of inverse dependence of adaptability with fitness clearly emerges. In quantitative terms, it is remarkable to observe little if any degree of idiosyncrasy across systems as diverse as virus, bacteria and yeast. The universality of this phenomenon suggests that its emergence might be understood from general principles, giving rise to the exciting prospect that evolution might be statistically predictable at the macroscopic level. We discuss these possibilities in the light of the various theories of adaptation that have been proposed and delineate future directions of research.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available