Department of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, Quartier Sorge-Batiment Genopode, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Nat Commun. 2023 Jun 19;14(1):3624. doi: 10.1038/s41467-023-39321-8.
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.
可进化性——产生适应性遗传变异的能力——本身能否通过适应性达尔文进化而进化？如果可以，那么达尔文进化可能有助于创造使达尔文进化成为可能的条件。在这里，我提出了一个框架，该框架适用于使用适应性景观的现有实验数据来解决这个问题。我引入了增强可进化性突变的概念，该突变增加了进化生物、蛋白质或 RNA 分子中随后发生的突变具有适应性的可能性。我在蛋白质和 RNA 分子的经过实验表征和组合完全的适应度景观中寻找这种突变。我发现确实存在这样的增强可进化性的突变。它们只占所有突变的一小部分，它们使随后突变的适应度效应分布朝着更少有害突变的方向移动，并增加了有益突变的发生率。经历这些突变的进化种群可以进化出更高的适应性。增强可进化性突变的研究为可进化性的进化开辟了许多研究途径。
