ArticleAnnual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics2014
On the Nature and Evolutionary Impact of Phenotypic Robustness Mechanisms.
Article in Annual review of ecology, evolution, and systematics, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 45 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
45 citing papers in PubMed.
- The distribution of fitness effects of nonsynonymous mutations varies phylogenetically across animals.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Internalized Evolutionary Inertia on Body Plan Evolution.Evolution & development · 2026Review
- Article
- Dynamics of Expression Variability Contribute to Retention of Small-Scale vs. Whole-Genome Duplicates.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Evolvability: progress and key questions.Bioscience · 2025Review
- Estimating (Non)Linear Selection on Reaction Norms: A General Framework for Labile Traits.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Stereotyped Subclones Revealed by High-Density Single-Cell Lineage Tracing Support Robust Development.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2025Article
- Robustness quantification of a mutant library screen revealed key genetic markers in yeast.Microbial cell factories · 2024Article
- Mutational robustness and the role of buffer genes in evolvability.The EMBO journal · 2024Review
- Phenotypic heterogeneity in human genetic diseases: ultrasensitivity-mediated threshold effects as a unifying molecular mechanism.Journal of biomedical science · 2023Review
- Characterizing the landscape of gene expression variance in humans.PLoS genetics · 2023Article
- Multiple intermolecular interactions facilitate rapid evolution of essential genes.Nature ecology & evolution · 2023Article
- Canalization of Phenotypes-When the Transcriptome is Constantly but Weakly Perturbed.Molecular biology and evolution · 2023Article
- Early effects of gene duplication on the robustness and phenotypic variability of gene regulatory networks.BMC bioinformatics · 2022Article
- Deleterious Mutations and the Rare Allele Burden on Rice Gene Expression.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Genetic basis of a spontaneous mutation's expressivity.Genetics · 2022Article
- Article
- Evolution of larval segment position across 12 Drosophila species.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2020Article
- Article
- Co-opting evo-devo concepts for new insights into mechanisms of behavioural diversity.The Journal of experimental biology · 2019Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Biologists have long observed that physiological and developmental processes are insensitive, or robust, to many genetic and environmental perturbations. A complete understanding of the evolutionary causes and consequences of this robustness is lacking. Recent progress has been made in uncovering the regulatory mechanisms that underlie environmental robustness in particular. Less is known about robustness to the effects of mutations, and indeed the evolution of mutational robustness remains a controversial topic. The controversy has spread to related topics, in particular the evolutionary relevance of cryptic genetic variation. This review aims to synthesize current understanding of robustness mechanisms and to cut through the controversy by shedding light on what is and is not known about mutational robustness. Some studies have confused mutational robustness with non-additive interactions between mutations (epistasis). We conclude that a profitable way forward is to focus investigations (and rhetoric) less on mutational robustness and more on epistasis.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
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.