Epistasis and the selective advantage of sex and recombination

A systematic survey of an intragenic epistatic landscape

Mutations are the source of evolutionary variation. The interactions of multiple mutations can have important effects on fitness and evolutionary trajectories. We have recently described the distribution of fitness effects of all single mutations for a nine-amino-acid region of yeast Hsp90 (Hsp82) implicated in substrate binding. Here, we report and discuss the distribution of intragenic epistatic effects within this region in seven Hsp90 point mutant backgrounds of neutral to slightly deleterious effect, resulting in an analysis of more than 1,000 double mutants. We find negative epistasis between substitutions to be common, and positive epistasis to be rare--resulting in a pattern that indicates a drastic change in the distribution of fitness effects one step away from the wild type. This can be well explained by a concave relationship between phenotype and genotype (i.e., a concave shape of the local fitness landscape), suggesting mutational robustness intrinsic to the local sequence space. Structural analyses indicate that, in this region, epistatic effects are most pronounced when a solvent-inaccessible position is involved in the interaction. In contrast, all 18 observations of positive epistasis involved at least one mutation at a solvent-exposed position. By combining the analysis of evolutionary and biophysical properties of an epistatic landscape, these results contribute to a more detailed understanding of the complexity of protein evolution.

The role of advantageous mutations in enhancing the evolution of a recombination modifier

Although the evolution of recombination is still a major problem in evolutionary genetics, recent theoretical studies have shown that recombination can evolve by breaking down interference ("Hill-Robertson effects") among multiple loci. This leads to selection on a recombination modifier in a population subject to recurrent deleterious mutation. Here, we use computer simulations to investigate the evolution of a recombination modifier under three different scenarios of recurrent mutation in a finite population: (1) mutations are deleterious only, (2) mutations are advantageous only, and (3) there is a mixture of deleterious and advantageous mutations. We also investigate how linkage disequilibrium, the strength of selection acting on a modifier, and effective population size change under the different scenarios. We observe that adding even a small number of advantageous mutations increases the fixation rate of modifiers that increase recombination, especially if the effects of deleterious mutations are weak. However, the strength of selection on a modifier is less than the summed strengths had there been deleterious mutations only and advantageous mutations only.

Rate of fixation of beneficial mutations in sexual populations

We have investigated the rate of substitution of advantageous mutations in populations of haploid organisms where the rate of recombination can be controlled. We have verified that in all the situations recombination speeds up adaptation through recombination of beneficial mutations from distinct lineages in a single individual, and so reducing the intensity of clonal interference. The advantage of sex for adaptation is even stronger when deleterious mutations occur since now recombination can also restore genetic background free of deleterious mutations. However, our simulation results demonstrate that evidence of clonal interference, as increased mean selective effect of fixed mutations and reduced likelihood of fixation of small-effect mutations, are also present in sexual populations. What we see is that this evidence is delayed when compared to asexual populations.