Evolvability is a selectable trait.

Concomitant with the evolution of biological diversity must have been the evolution of mechanisms that facilitate evolution, because of the essentially infinite complexity of protein sequence space. We describe how evolvability can be an object of Darwinian selection, emphasizing the collective nature of the process. We quantify our theory with computer simulations of protein evolution. These simulations demonstrate that rapid or dramatic environmental change leads to selection for greater evolvability. The selective pressure for large-scale genetic moves such as DNA exchange becomes increasingly strong as the environmental conditions become more uncertain. Our results demonstrate that evolvability is a selectable trait and allow for the explanation of a large body of experimental results.

• Publication year

  2004

• Venue

  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

• Publication date

  2004-07-07

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine, Physics

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1073/pnas.0404656101arXiv q-bio/0407012PMID 15289608PMCID PMC511006
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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