ArticleJournal of molecular evolution2020
Moderate Amounts of Epistasis are Not Evolutionarily Stable in Small Populations.
Article in Journal of molecular evolution, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Evolution of the rate, molecular spectrum, and fitness effects of mutation under minimal selection in Caenorhabditis elegans.Genetics · 2026Article
- Evolution of the rate, molecular spectrum, and fitness effects of mutation under minimal selection inbioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Article
- Evolvability-enhancing mutations in the fitness landscapes of an RNA and a protein.Nature communications · 2023Article
- 2020 Zuckerkandl Prize.Journal of molecular evolution · 2021Article
- Evolution of Epistasis: Small Populations Go Their Separate Ways.Journal of molecular evolution · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
Abstract
High mutation rates select for the evolution of mutational robustness where populations inhabit flat fitness peaks with little epistasis, protecting them from lethal mutagenesis. Recent evidence suggests that a different effect protects small populations from extinction via the accumulation of deleterious mutations. In drift robustness, populations tend to occupy peaks with steep flanks and positive epistasis between mutations. However, it is not known what happens when mutation rates are high and population sizes are small at the same time. Using a simple fitness model with variable epistasis, we show that the equilibrium fitness has a minimum as a function of the parameter that tunes epistasis, implying that this critical point is an unstable fixed point for evolutionary trajectories. In agent-based simulations of evolution at finite mutation rate, we demonstrate that when mutations can change epistasis, trajectories with a subcritical value of epistasis evolve to decrease epistasis, while those with supercritical initial points evolve towards higher epistasis. These two fixed points can be identified with mutational and drift robustness, respectively.
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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.