2004/07/07 by David J. Earl, Michael W. Deem · 3 citations
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Social Sciences · #Artificial intelligence #Biology #Computational biology #Computer science #Darwinism #Evolution and Genetic Dynamics #Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation #Evolutionary biology #Evolvability #Gene #Gene Regulatory Network Analysis #Genetics #Molecular evolution #Phylogenetics #Selection (genetic algorithm) #Sequence (biology) #Sequence space #Trait #q-bio.PE
paper · pdf · doi:10.1073/pnas.0404656101
21 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA
arxiv created 2004/07/07 · openalex publication_date 2004/08/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
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.