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Related Experiment Videos

Plasticity, evolvability, and modularity in RNA.

L W Ancel1, W Fontana

  • 1Department of Biological Sciences, Stanford University, California 94305, USA.

The Journal of Experimental Zoology
|November 9, 2000
PubMed
Summary
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RNA evolution can halt due to reduced plasticity, a phenomenon termed neutral confinement. This occurs when environmental canalization leads to genetic canalization, limiting evolvability and potentially driving modularity.

Area of Science:

  • * Computational Biology
  • * Evolutionary Genetics
  • * Biophysics

Background:

  • * RNA secondary structures serve as a biophysically grounded genotype-phenotype map.
  • * Concepts like plasticity, evolvability, and modularity are precisely definable and measurable in RNA systems.
  • * Natural selection's effects on these properties are profoundly non-independent.

Purpose of the Study:

  • * To investigate the evolutionary dynamics of RNA populations toward a target shape.
  • * To analyze the impact of molecular plasticity on evolutionary processes.
  • * To understand the relationship between environmental and genetic canalization and its effect on evolvability.

Main Methods:

  • * Simulations of RNA population dynamics evolving toward a predefined target shape.

Related Experiment Videos

  • * Analysis of molecular plasticity as the capacity to assume multiple energetically favorable shapes.
  • * Development of analytical models for neutral confinement based on plastogenetic congruence.

    • Main Results:

    • * Selection reduces RNA plasticity, leading to environmental canalization.
    • * Reduced plasticity causes genetic canalization, decreasing evolvability and leading to evolutionary lock-in.
    • * Plastogenetic congruence links environmental and genetic canalization, causing neutral confinement where genetic variation becomes phenotypically neutral.
    • * Three mutational regimes (neutral confinement, exploration threshold, error threshold) were identified.
    • * Canalized phenotypes exhibit extreme modularity across thermophysical, kinetic, and genetic perspectives.

    Conclusions:

    • * Environmental canalization can lead to neutral confinement, halting evolution by reducing evolvability.
    • * Modularity may arise as a byproduct of environmental canalization during RNA evolution.
    • * The RNA genotype-phenotype map provides a powerful model for studying fundamental evolutionary concepts.