ArticleMolecular biology and evolution2015
Fitness Trade-Offs Determine the Role of the Molecular Chaperonin GroEL in Buffering Mutations.
Article in Molecular biology and evolution, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 29 papers.
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29 citing papers in PubMed, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- The evolution of robustness and fragility during long-term bacterial adaptation.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Protein Quality Control is a Master Modulator of Molecular Evolution in Bacteria.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Review
- The Hsp90 Molecular Chaperone as a Global Modifier of the Genotype-Phenotype-Fitness Map: An Evolutionary Perspective.Journal of molecular biology · 2024Review
- Viral Evolution Shaped by Host Proteostasis Networks.Annual review of virology · 2023Review
- Mycobacterial chaperonins in cellular proteostasis: Evidence for chaperone function of Cpn60.1 and Cpn60.2-mediated protein folding.Molecular microbiology · 2023Article
- Article
- Mechanisms of protein evolution.Protein science : a publication of the Protein Society · 2022Review
- GroEL/S Overexpression Helps to Purge Deleterious Mutations and Reduce Genetic Diversity during Adaptive Protein Evolution.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Thermal stress and mutation accumulation increase heat shock protein expression inEvolutionary ecology · 2022Article
- Essential gene acquisition destabilizes plasmid inheritance.PLoS genetics · 2021Article
- Article
- Impact of the Resistance Responses to Stress Conditions Encountered in Food and Food Processing Environments on the Virulence and Growth Fitness of Non-TyphoidalFoods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2021Review
- The Boggarts of biology: how non-genetic changes influence the genotype.Current genetics · 2021Review
- Chaperonin Abundance Enhances Bacterial Fitness.Frontiers in molecular biosciences · 2021Article
- Comparative transcriptomic analysis of Rickettsia conorii during in vitro infection of human and tick host cells.BMC genomics · 2020Article
- Chaperone client proteins evolve slower than non-client proteins.Functional & integrative genomics · 2020Article
- Evolution from Free-Living Bacteria to Endosymbionts of Insects: Genomic Changes and the Importance of the Chaperonin GroEL.Results and problems in cell differentiation · 2020Article
- Opposing Pressures of Speed and Efficiency Guide the Evolution of Molecular Machines.Molecular biology and evolution · 2019Article
- Decanalizing thinking on genetic canalization.Seminars in cell & developmental biology · 2019Review
- Evolution of drift robustness in small populations.Nature communications · 2017Article
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 5 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Molecular chaperones fold many proteins and their mutated versions in a cell and can sometimes buffer the phenotypic effect of mutations that affect protein folding. Unanswered questions about this buffering include the nature of its mechanism, its influence on the genetic variation of a population, the fitness trade-offs constraining this mechanism, and its role in expediting evolution. Answering these questions is fundamental to understand the contribution of buffering to increase genetic variation and ecological diversification. Here, we performed experimental evolution, genome resequencing, and computational analyses to determine the trade-offs and evolutionary trajectories of Escherichia coli expressing high levels of the essential chaperonin GroEL. GroEL is abundantly present in bacteria, particularly in bacteria with large loads of deleterious mutations, suggesting its role in mutational buffering. We show that groEL overexpression is costly to large populations evolving in the laboratory, leading to groE expression decline within 66 generations. In contrast, populations evolving under the strong genetic drift characteristic of endosymbiotic bacteria avoid extinction or can be rescued in the presence of abundant GroEL. Genomes resequenced from cells evolved under strong genetic drift exhibited significantly higher tolerance to deleterious mutations at high GroEL levels than at native levels, revealing that GroEL is buffering mutations in these cells. GroEL buffered mutations in a highly diverse set of proteins that interact with the environment, including substrate and ion membrane transporters, hinting at its role in ecological diversification. Our results reveal the fitness trade-offs of mutational buffering and how genetic variation is maintained in populations.
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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.