Global epistasis on fitness landscapes

Epistatic interactions between mutations add substantial complexity to adaptive landscapes and are often thought of as detrimental to our ability to predict evolution. Yet, patterns of global epistasis, in which the fitness effect of a mutation is well-predicted by the fitness of its genetic backgro...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Díaz-Colunga, Juan, Skwara, Abigail, Gowda, Karna, Díaz-Uriarte, Ramón, Tikhonov, Mikhail, Bajić, Djordje, Sánchez de Andrés, Álvaro
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2023
País:España
Institución:Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC)
Repositorio:DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC
OAI Identifier:oai:digital.csic.es:10261/340309
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10261/340309
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Global epistasis
Fitness landscapes
Idiosyncratic epistasis
Descripción
Sumario:Epistatic interactions between mutations add substantial complexity to adaptive landscapes and are often thought of as detrimental to our ability to predict evolution. Yet, patterns of global epistasis, in which the fitness effect of a mutation is well-predicted by the fitness of its genetic background, may actually be of help in our efforts to reconstruct fitness landscapes and infer adaptive trajectories. Microscopic interactions between mutations, or inherent nonlinearities in the fitness landscape, may cause global epistasis patterns to emerge. In this brief review, we provide a succinct overview of recent work about global epistasis, with an emphasis on building intuition about why it is often observed. To this end, we reconcile simple geometric reasoning with recent mathematical analyses, using these to explain why different mutations in an empirical landscape may exhibit different global epistasis patterns—ranging from diminishing to increasing returns. Finally, we highlight open questions and research directions.