ArticleNature2011
Cryptic genetic variation promotes rapid evolutionary adaptation in an RNA enzyme.
Article in Nature, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 118 papers.
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Who cites it
118 citing papers in PubMed, 235 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Sequence modeling and design from molecular to genome scale with Evo.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2024Article
- Cryptic genetic variation shapes the fate of gene duplicates in a protein interaction network.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Co-expression of distinct L1 retrotransposon coiled coils can lead to their entanglement.Mobile DNA · 2023Article
- The genetic architecture of behavioral canalization.Trends in genetics : TIG · 2023Review
- The effect of mutational robustness on the evolvability of multicellular organisms and eukaryotic cells.Journal of evolutionary biology · 2023Article
- Robustness and innovation in synthetic genotype networks.Nature communications · 2023Article
- The rapid evolution of flagellar ion selectivity in experimental populations ofScience advances · 2022Article
- Dynamic RNA Fitness Landscapes of a Group I Ribozyme during Changes to the Experimental Environment.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
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- Fitness landscape of a dynamic RNA structure.PLoS genetics · 2021Article
- Natural selection mediated by seasonal time constraints increases the alignment between evolvability and developmental plasticity.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2021Article
58 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Cryptic variation is caused by the robustness of phenotypes to mutations. Cryptic variation has no effect on phenotypes in a given genetic or environmental background, but it can have effects after mutations or environmental change. Because evolutionary adaptation by natural selection requires phenotypic variation, phenotypically revealed cryptic genetic variation may facilitate evolutionary adaptation. This is possible if the cryptic variation happens to be pre-adapted, or "exapted", to a new environment, and is thus advantageous once revealed. However, this facilitating role for cryptic variation has not been proven, partly because most pertinent work focuses on complex phenotypes of whole organisms whose genetic basis is incompletely understood. Here we show that populations of RNA enzymes with accumulated cryptic variation adapt more rapidly to a new substrate than a population without cryptic variation. A detailed analysis of our evolving RNA populations in genotype space shows that cryptic variation allows a population to explore new genotypes that become adaptive only in a new environment. Our observations show that cryptic variation contains new genotypes pre-adapted to a changed environment. Our results highlight the positive role that robustness and epistasis can have in adaptive evolution.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.