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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 6, 2026

Molecular Evolution of the Tre Recombinase

Molecular Evolution of the Tre Recombinase

Published on: May 29, 2008

Recombination drives the evolution of mutational robustness.

Sonia Singhal¹, Shawn M Gomez^2,3,4, Christina L Burch¹

¹Biology Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.

Current Opinion in Systems Biology

|October 2, 2019

Summary

Populations can reduce recombination load by altering gene interactions or recombination rates. Reducing gene interaction strength also enhances robustness to mutations, unlike solely reducing recombination.

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Last Updated: Jan 6, 2026

Molecular Evolution of the Tre Recombinase

Molecular Evolution of the Tre Recombinase

Published on: May 29, 2008

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

Following the Dynamics of Structural Variants in Experimentally Evolved Populations

Published on: February 3, 2023

Preparation of the Mgm101 Recombination Protein by MBP-based Tagging Strategy

Preparation of the Mgm101 Recombination Protein by MBP-based Tagging Strategy

Published on: June 25, 2013

Area of Science:

Evolutionary genetics
Population genetics
Genomics

Background:

Recombination can break apart advantageous allele combinations, leading to a fitness cost known as recombination load.
Computational models propose two main evolutionary strategies to mitigate recombination load: reducing recombination frequency or weakening gene interactions.

Purpose of the Study:

To review evidence supporting the reduction of recombination load through decreased recombination likelihood or interaction strength.
To examine the consequences of these evolutionary mechanisms on the genotype-fitness relationship.
To predict genome robustness to mutations based on the strategy employed to reduce recombination load.

Main Methods:

Literature review of empirical and theoretical studies on recombination load.
Analysis of computational models investigating the evolution of recombination and epistasis.
Synthesis of evidence regarding the relationship between physical linkage, gene interactions, and genome robustness.

Main Results:

Evidence supports both reduced recombination rates and weakened locus interactions as mechanisms to decrease recombination load.
Reducing interaction strengths is predicted to confer robustness to mutational perturbations.
Reducing recombination rates alone is not expected to confer similar mutational robustness.

Conclusions:

Both reduced recombination and weakened locus interactions likely contributed to the evolution of extant populations.
These evolutionary pressures can explain the common observation of physical linkage between interacting loci.
The genotype-fitness landscape is shaped by the interplay between recombination, epistasis, and mutation.