Hidden Randomness between Fitness Landscapes Limits Reverse Evolution
Condensed Matter journal club
Hidden Randomness between Fitness Landscapes Limits Reverse Evolution
- Event time: 11:30am
- Event date: 24th June 2011
- Speaker: Professor Wilson Poon (School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
- Location: Room 2511, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
Abstract
In biological evolution, adaptations to one environment can in some cases reverse adaptations to another environment. To study this "reverse evolution" on a genotypic level, we measured the fitness of E. coli strains with each possible combination of five mutations in an antibiotic-resistance gene in two distinct antibiotic environments. While adaptations to one environment generally lower fitness in the other, we find that reverse evolution is rarely possible and falls as the complexity of adaptations increases, suggesting a probabilistic, molecular form of Dollo's law.Physical Review Letters 106 article 198102 (2011)
Authors
Longzhi Tan, Stephen Serene, Hui Xiao Chao, and Jeff Gore
About Condensed Matter journal club
Given the diversity of research in the CM group, chosen topics vary widely. We tend to stick to high-impact journals - Nature, Science, PNAS and PRL have been popular - but this is not prescriptive..