Related Experiment Video
Updated: Apr 23, 2026

Daily Transfers, Archiving Populations, and Measuring Fitness in the Long-Term Evolution Experiment with Escherichia coli
Published on: August 18, 2023
Experimental fitness landscapes to understand the molecular evolution of RNA-based life
Shreyas S Athavale1, Brad Spicer2, Irene A Chen2
1Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, United States.
Abstract:
In evolutionary biology, the relationship between genotype and Darwinian fitness is known as a fitness landscape. These landscapes underlie natural selection, so understanding them would greatly improve quantitative prediction of evolutionary outcomes, guiding the development of synthetic living systems. However, the structure of fitness landscapes is essentially unknown. Our ability to experimentally probe these landscapes is physically limited by the number of different sequences that can be identified. This number has increased dramatically in the last several years, leading to qualitatively new investigations. Several approaches to illuminate fitness landscapes are possible, ranging from tight focus on a single peak to random speckling or even comprehensive coverage of an entire landscape. We discuss recent experimental studies of fitness landscapes, with a special focus on functional RNA, an important system for both synthetic cells and the origin of life.
Related Concept Videos
Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?
In contrast, regions which code...
Gene Evolution - Fast or Slow?
Bacterial RNA Polymerase
In most genes, the transcription site is a single base present upstream of the coding sequence. Though RNAP is a catalytically efficient enzyme, it does not recognize...
Evolution of New Traits in Microbes
Bacterial Transcription
Transcription can be divided into three main stages, each involving distinct DNA sequences to guide the polymerase. These are:
Evolutionary Relationships through Genome Comparisons

