2022/04/28 by Claudia Bank, Bank, Claudia · 5 citations
Agricultural and Biological Sciences · Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Social Sciences · #Animal Behavior and Reproduction #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #FOS: Biological sciences #Populations and Evolution (q-bio.PE)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2204.13321
openalex publication_date 2022/04/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Epistasis occurs when the effect of a mutation depends on its carrier's genetic background. Despite increasing evidence that epistasis for fitness is common, its role during evolution is contentious. Fitness landscapes, mappings of genotype or phenotype to fitness, capture the full extent and complexity of epistasis. Fitness landscape theory has shown how epistasis affects the course and the outcome of evolution. Moreover, by measuring the competitive fitness of sets of tens to thousands of connected genotypes, empirical fitness landscapes have shown that epistasis is frequent and depends on the fitness measure, the choice of mutations for the landscape, and the environment in which it was measured. Here, I review fitness landscape theory and experiments and their implications for the role of epistasis in adaptation. I discuss theoretical expectations in the light of empirical fitness landscapes and highlight open challenges and future directions towards integrating theory and data, and incorporating ecological factors.