ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2012
Evolutionary layering and the limits to cellular perfection.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 36 papers.
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Who cites it
36 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolution of the rate, molecular spectrum, and fitness effects of mutation under minimal selection in Caenorhabditis elegans.Genetics · 2026Article
- From genes to collective modes: biological constraints shape metabolic evolution.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Evolution of the rate, molecular spectrum, and fitness effects of mutation under minimal selection inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Evolving a Field: Can Evolutionary Theory Provide What the Study of Human Evolution Requires?American journal of biological anthropology · 2025Review
- Exact path-integral representation of the Wright-Fisher model with mutation and selection.BMC genomics · 2025Article
- Aging by the clock and yet without a program.Nature aging · 2025Review
- Translational fidelity and longevity are genetically linked.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Complexity myths and the misappropriation of evolutionary theory.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Spontaneous mutations and mutational responses to penicillin treatment in the bacterial pathogenMarine life science & technology · 2024Article
- Mitochondrial genomes revisited: why do different lineages retain different genes?BMC biology · 2024Review
- The divergence of mutation rates and spectra across the Tree of Life.EMBO reports · 2023Review
- A Law of Redundancy Compounds the Problem of Cancer and Precision Medicine.Journal of molecular evolution · 2023Article
- Developing an appropriate evolutionary baseline model for the study of SARS-CoV-2 patient samples.PLoS pathogens · 2023Review
- Diversity and metabolic energy in bacteria.FEMS microbiology letters · 2023Article
- Rapid evolution of mutation rate and spectrum in response to environmental and population-genetic challenges.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Resilience integrates concepts in aging research.iScience · 2022Review
- Self-selection of evolutionary strategies: adaptiveHeliyon · 2021Article
- Imposed mutational meltdown as an antiviral strategy.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2020Review
- Evolutionary stalling and a limit on the power of natural selection to improve a cellular module.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2020Article
- Longevity and the drift barrier: Bridging the gap between Medawar and Hamilton.Evolution letters · 2020Article
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Abstract
Although observations from biochemistry and cell biology seemingly illustrate hundreds of examples of exquisite molecular adaptations, the fact that experimental manipulation can often result in improvements in cellular infrastructure raises the question as to what ultimately limits the level of molecular perfection achievable by natural selection. Here, it is argued that random genetic drift can impose a strong barrier to the advancement of molecular refinements by adaptive processes. Moreover, although substantial improvements in fitness may sometimes be accomplished via the emergence of novel cellular features that improve on previously established mechanisms, such advances are expected to often be transient, with overall fitness eventually returning to the level before incorporation of the genetic novelty. As a consequence of such changes, increased molecular/cellular complexity can arise by Darwinian processes, while yielding no long-term increase in adaptation and imposing increased energetic and mutational costs.
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