ArticleNature communications2023
Evolvability-enhancing mutations in the fitness landscapes of an RNA and a protein.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Deconstructing empirical fitness seascapes across scales of granularity.G3 (Bethesda, Md.) · 2026Article
- How Does Transcription-Associated Mutagenesis Shape tRNA Microevolution?Genome biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Deconstructing empirical fitness seascapes across scales of granularity.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Historical contingency limits adaptive diversification in a spatially structured environment.Evolution letters · 2026Article
- Article
- Favorable epistasis in ancestral diterpene synthases promoted convergent evolution of a resin acid precursor in conifers.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Experimental mapping of bacterial fitness landscapes reveals eco-evolutionary fingerprints.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Coevolutionary history of predation constrains the evolvability of antibiotic resistance in prey bacteria.npj antimicrobials and resistance · 2025Article
- Bioengineering hybrid artificial life.Frontiers in bioinformatics · 2025Review
- Evolution of evolvability in rapidly adapting populations.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Effects of selection stringency on the outcomes of directed evolution.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- Engineering is evolution: a perspective on design processes to engineer biology.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Ensemble-Based Mutational Profiling and Network Analysis of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike Omicron XBB Lineages for Interactions with the ACE2 Receptor and Antibodies: Cooperation of Binding Hotspots in Mediating Epistatic Couplings Underlies Binding Mechanism and Immune Escape.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Article
- Evolvability: filling the explanatory gap between adaptedness and the long-term mathematical conception of fitness.Biology & philosophy · 2024Article
- Article
- Mutations that enhance evolvability may open doors to faster adaptation.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Review
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
Can evolvability-the ability to produce adaptive heritable variation-itself evolve through adaptive Darwinian evolution? If so, then Darwinian evolution may help create the conditions that enable Darwinian evolution. Here I propose a framework that is suitable to address this question with available experimental data on adaptive landscapes. I introduce the notion of an evolvability-enhancing mutation, which increases the likelihood that subsequent mutations in an evolving organism, protein, or RNA molecule are adaptive. I search for such mutations in the experimentally characterized and combinatorially complete fitness landscapes of a protein and an RNA molecule. I find that such evolvability-enhancing mutations indeed exist. They constitute a small fraction of all mutations, which shift the distribution of fitness effects of subsequent mutations towards less deleterious mutations, and increase the incidence of beneficial mutations. Evolving populations which experience such mutations can evolve significantly higher fitness. The study of evolvability-enhancing mutations opens many avenues of investigation into the evolution of evolvability.
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