ArticleBiophysical journal2014
Mutational robustness accelerates the origin of novel RNA phenotypes through phenotypic plasticity.
Article in Biophysical journal, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 29 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genetic mechanisms underlying the structural elaboration and dissemination of viral internal ribosomal entry sites.Nucleic acids research · 2026Article
- System drift in the evolution of plant meristem development.PLoS genetics · 2026Article
- The RNA Revolution in the Central Molecular Biology Dogma Evolution.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- The Boltzmann distributions of molecular structures predict likely changes through random mutations.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- The non-deterministic genotype-phenotype map of RNA secondary structure.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Fast free-energy-based neutral set size estimates for the RNA genotype-phenotype map.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Insertions and deletions in the RNA sequence-structure map.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2021Article
- Degeneracy and genetic assimilation in RNA evolution.BMC bioinformatics · 2018Article
- On the networked architecture of genotype spaces and its critical effects on molecular evolution.Open biology · 2018Review
- The architecture of an empirical genotype-phenotype map.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2018Article
- Does pathogen plasticity facilitate host shifts?PLoS pathogens · 2018Article
- Genonets server-a web server for the construction, analysis and visualization of genotype networks.Nucleic acids research · 2016Article
- Biophysics of protein evolution and evolutionary protein biophysics.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2014Article
- Preservation of genetic and regulatory robustness in ancient gene duplicates of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.Genome research · 2014Article
- Latent phenotypes pervade gene regulatory circuits.BMC systems biology · 2014Article
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
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Abstract
Novel phenotypes can originate either through mutations in existing genotypes or through phenotypic plasticity, the ability of one genotype to form multiple phenotypes. From molecules to organisms, plasticity is a ubiquitous feature of life, and a potential source of exaptations, adaptive traits that originated for nonadaptive reasons. Another ubiquitous feature is robustness to mutations, although it is unknown whether such robustness helps or hinders the origin of new phenotypes through plasticity. RNA is ideal to address this question, because it shows extensive plasticity in its secondary structure phenotypes, a consequence of their continual folding and unfolding, and these phenotypes have important biological functions. Moreover, RNA is to some extent robust to mutations. This robustness structures RNA genotype space into myriad connected networks of genotypes with the same phenotype, and it influences the dynamics of evolving populations on a genotype network. In this study I show that both effects help accelerate the exploration of novel phenotypes through plasticity. My observations are based on many RNA molecules sampled at random from RNA sequence space, and on 30 biological RNA molecules. They are thus not only a generic feature of RNA sequence space but are relevant for the molecular evolution of biological RNA.
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