ArticleGenetics2012
Gene functional trade-offs and the evolution of pleiotropy.
Article in Genetics, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 37 papers.
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Who cites it
37 citing papers in PubMed.
- Gene-level complexity explains genome-wide variation in the distribution of fitness effects.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Environmental "knees" and "wiggles" as strong stabilizers of species' range limits set by interspecific competition.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Pleiotropy and Facilitation of Local Adaptation in the Silverleaf Sunflower Helianthus argophyllus.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Pleiotropy and the evolutionary stability of plastic phenotypes: a geometric framework.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Article
- Temperature and the evolution of flower color: A review.American journal of botany · 2026Review
- Pleiotropy increases with gene age in six model multicellular eukaryotes.Evolution letters · 2025Article
- Molecular mechanisms of Eda-mediated adaptation to freshwater in threespine stickleback.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Evolutionarily new genes in humans with disease phenotypes reveal functional enrichment patterns shaped by adaptive innovation and sexual selection.Genome research · 2025Article
- Biological constraint, evolutionary spandrels and antagonistic pleiotropy.Ageing research reviews · 2024Review
- Evolution of evolvability in rapidly adapting populations.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Evolutionarily new genes in humans with disease phenotypes reveal functional enrichment patterns shaped by adaptive innovation and sexual selection.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Most Pleiotropic Effects of Gene Knockouts Are Evolutionarily Transient in Yeasts.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- Genetic factors explaining anthocyanin pigmentation differences.BMC plant biology · 2024Article
- Pleiotropy alleviates the fitness costs associated with resource allocation trade-offs in immune signalling networks.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Article
- Evolutionarily new genes in humans with disease phenotypes reveal functional enrichment patterns shaped by adaptive innovation and sexual selection.Research square · 2023Article
- Patterns and evolutionary consequences of pleiotropy.Annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics · 2023Article
- Pleiotropy alleviates the fitness costs associated with resource allocation trade-offs in immune signaling networks.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2023Article
- [Evolutionary cardiology and experimental research].Archivos de cardiologia de Mexico · 2022Article
- Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Pleiotropy is the property of genes affecting multiple functions or characters of an organism. Genes vary widely in their degree of pleiotropy, but this variation is often considered a by-product of their evolutionary history. We present a functional theory of how pleiotropy may itself evolve. We consider genes that contribute to two functions, where contributing more to one function detracts from allocation to the second function. We show that whether genes become pleiotropic or specialize on a single function depends on the nature of trade-offs as gene activities contribute to different traits and on how the functionality of these traits affects fitness. In general, when a gene product can perform well at two functions, it evolves to do so, but not when pleiotropy would greatly disrupt each function. Consequently, reduced pleiotropy should often evolve, with genes specializing on the trait that is currently more important to fitness. Even when pleiotropy does evolve, not all genes are expected to become equally pleiotropic; genes with higher levels of expression are more likely to evolve greater pleiotropy. For the case of gene duplicates, we find that perfect subfunctionalization evolves only under stringent conditions. More often, duplicates are expected to maintain a certain degree of functional redundancy, with the gene contributing more to trait functionality evolving the highest degree of pleiotropy. Gene product interactions can facilitate subfunctionalization, but whether they do so depends on the curvature of the fitness surface. Finally, we find that stochastic gene expression favors pleiotropy by selecting for robustness in fitness components.
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