ArticleInterface focus2015
The structure of the genotype-phenotype map strongly constrains the evolution of non-coding RNA.
Article in Interface focus, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 32 papers.
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Who cites it
32 citing papers in PubMed.
- Emergence Biases in Molecular Evolution.Genome biology and evolution · 2026Review
- Simplicity and Complexity in Combinatorial Optimization.Entropy (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Bounding phenotype transition probabilities via conditional complexity.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2025Article
- Article
- Non-Poissonian Bursts in the Arrival of Phenotypic Variation Can Strongly Affect the Dynamics of Adaptation.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- The Boltzmann distributions of molecular structures predict likely changes through random mutations.Biophysical journal · 2023Article
- Maximum mutational robustness in genotype-phenotype maps follows a self-similar blancmange-like curve.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2023Article
- Random and Natural Non-Coding RNA Have Similar Structural Motif Patterns but Differ in Bulge, Loop, and Bond Counts.Life (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- Predicting phenotype transition probabilities via conditional algorithmic probability approximations.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Fast free-energy-based neutral set size estimates for the RNA genotype-phenotype map.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2022Article
- Symmetry and simplicity spontaneously emerge from the algorithmic nature of evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Phenotype Bias Determines How Natural RNA Structures Occupy the Morphospace of All Possible Shapes.Molecular biology and evolution · 2022Article
- Evolution towards increasing complexity through functional diversification in a protocell model of the RNA world.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Insertions and deletions in the RNA sequence-structure map.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2021Article
- On the evolution and development of morphological complexity: A view from gene regulatory networks.PLoS computational biology · 2021Article
- Neutral components show a hierarchical community structure in the genotype-phenotype map of RNA secondary structure.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2020Article
- Populations of genetic circuits are unable to find the fittest solution in a multilevel genotype-phenotype map.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2020Article
- Using small samples to estimate neutral component size and robustness in the genotype-phenotype map of RNA secondary structure.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2020Article
- Generic predictions of output probability based on complexities of inputs and outputs.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- On the emergence of structural complexity in RNA replicators.RNA (New York, N.Y.) · 2019Article
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3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The prevalence of neutral mutations implies that biological systems typically have many more genotypes than phenotypes. But, can the way that genotypes are distributed over phenotypes determine evolutionary outcomes? Answering such questions is difficult, in part because the number of genotypes can be hyper-astronomically large. By solving the genotype-phenotype (GP) map for RNA secondary structure (SS) for systems up to length L = 126 nucleotides (where the set of all possible RNA strands would weigh more than the mass of the visible universe), we show that the GP map strongly constrains the evolution of non-coding RNA (ncRNA). Simple random sampling over genotypes predicts the distribution of properties such as the mutational robustness or the number of stems per SS found in naturally occurring ncRNA with surprising accuracy. Because we ignore natural selection, this strikingly close correspondence with the mapping suggests that structures allowing for functionality are easily discovered, despite the enormous size of the genetic spaces. The mapping is extremely biased: the majority of genotypes map to an exponentially small portion of the morphospace of all biophysically possible structures. Such strong constraints provide a non-adaptive explanation for the convergent evolution of structures such as the hammerhead ribozyme. These results present a particularly clear example of bias in the arrival of variation strongly shaping evolutionary outcomes and may be relevant to Mayr's distinction between proximate and ultimate causes in evolutionary biology.
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