ArticleTheoretical population biology2009
The rate at which asexual populations cross fitness valleys.
Article in Theoretical population biology, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 113 papers.
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Who cites it
113 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Evolutionary dynamics under phenotypic uncertainty.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
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- Geometry-induced competitive release in a meta-population model of range expansions in disordered environments.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Spatial structure facilitates evolutionary rescue by drug resistance.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Game changing mutation.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Review
- The highly rugged yet navigable regulatory landscape of the bacterial transcription factor TetR.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Linkage equilibrium between rare mutations.Genetics · 2024Article
- Evolution of evolvability in rapidly adapting populations.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Structure and dynamics of enterovirus genotype networks.Science advances · 2024Article
- Evolutionary graph theory beyond single mutation dynamics: on how network-structured populations cross fitness landscapes.Genetics · 2024Article
- Linkage equilibrium between rare mutations.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Article
- Have you tried turning it off and on again? Oscillating selection to enhance fitness-landscape traversal in adaptive laboratory evolution experiments.Metabolic engineering communications · 2023Review
- Long-range linkage effects in adapting sexual populations.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Mutation pressure, drift, and the pace of molecular coevolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2023Article
- Impact of population size on early adaptation in rugged fitness landscapes.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2023Article
- Evolutionary rescue of resistant mutants is governed by a balance between radial expansion and selection in compact populations.Nature communications · 2022Article
53 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Complex traits often involve interactions between different genetic loci. This can lead to sign epistasis, whereby mutations that are individually deleterious or neutral combine to confer a fitness benefit. In order to acquire the beneficial genotype, an asexual population must cross a fitness valley or plateau by first acquiring the deleterious or neutral intermediates. Here, we present a complete, intuitive theoretical description of the valley-crossing process across the full spectrum of possible parameter regimes. We calculate the rate at which a population crosses a fitness valley or plateau of arbitrary width, as a function of the mutation rates, the population size, and the fitnesses of the intermediates. We find that when intermediates are close to neutral, a large population can cross even wide fitness valleys remarkably quickly, so that valley-crossing dynamics may be common even when mutations that directly increase fitness are also possible. Thus the evolutionary dynamics of large populations can be sensitive to the structure of an extended region of the fitness landscape - the population may not take directly uphill paths in favor of paths across valleys and plateaus that lead eventually to fitter genotypes. In smaller populations, we find that below a threshold size, which depends on the width of the fitness valley and the strength of selection against intermediate genotypes, valley-crossing is much less likely and hence the evolutionary dynamics are less influenced by distant regions of the fitness landscape.
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