In silico predicted robustness of viroid RNA secondary structures. II. Interaction between mutation pairs

Viroids are plant subviral pathogens whose genomes are constituted by a single-stranded and covalently closed small RNA molecule that does not encode for any protein. Most of the 29 described viroid species fold into a rodlike or quasi-rodlike structure, whereas a few of them fold as highly branched structures. In a previous study, we used RNA thermodynamic secondary structure prediction algorithms to compare the mutational robustness of all viroid species. Here we used the same approach to explore the sign and strength of epistasis among pairs of random mutations. We found that antagonistic interactions were more abundant than synergistic ones. However, despite their lower frequency, synergistic interactions tended to be more intense. Mutational robustness and the intensity of epistasis were correlated such that viroid species with large average mutational effects showed stronger antagonistic epistasis, whereas viroids with mild average mutational effects showed weaker antagonistic interactions. The strength of antagonistic epistasis decreased with genome complexity as a consequence of the gained robustness of duplicated genomes. In good agreement with our previous finding of an evolutionary trend toward increased robustness, we now found a trend toward reduced antagonistic epistasis.