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Updated: Jun 11, 2026

Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
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Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli

Published on: August 18, 2023

Robustness and evolvability.

Joanna Masel1, Meredith V Trotter

  • 1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Arizona PO Box 210088, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. masel@u.arizona.edu

Trends in Genetics : TIG
|July 6, 2010
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Biological robustness, or the ability to withstand change, enhances evolution by allowing cryptic genetic variation to accumulate. This promotes adaptation, especially under stress, making systems more evolvable.

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary biology
  • Genetics
  • Systems biology

Background:

  • Biological systems exhibit remarkable robustness to mutations, recombination, and environmental changes.
  • Robustness has been proposed as a key factor enhancing evolvability.
  • Two main research areas link robustness to evolvability: molecular phenotypes/new mutations and morphology/cryptic genetic variation.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the relationship between biological robustness and evolvability.
  • To reconcile separate literatures on robustness and evolvability by identifying a unifying principle.
  • To demonstrate how robustness facilitates adaptation and genetic variation accumulation.

Main Methods:

  • Review of existing literature on robustness and evolvability in molecular and morphological contexts.
  • Analysis of the role of genetic variation, cryptic states, and evolutionary capacitors.
  • Examination of the influence of recombination rates on the robustness-evolvability relationship.

Main Results:

  • Robustness to mutation allows for the accumulation of cryptic genetic variation.
  • Evolutionary capacitors modulate heritable phenotypic variation in response to environmental stress.
  • The distinction between high and low recombination rates unifies separate research findings.
  • Evidence supports the claim that robustness promotes evolvability across different biological contexts.

Conclusions:

  • Biological robustness is a significant driver of evolvability.
  • Robustness facilitates adaptation by enabling the storage and release of genetic variation.
  • Recombination rates play a crucial role in how robustness impacts evolvability.