idw – Informationsdienst Wissenschaft

Nachrichten, Termine, Experten

Grafik: idw-Logo
Science Video Project
idw-Abo

idw-News App:

AppStore

Google Play Store



Instanz:
Teilen: 
14.09.2022 12:59

Young genes adapt faster than old ones

Michael Hesse Presse- und Öffentlichkeitsarbeit
Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionsbiologie

    A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön and the University of Sussex in the UK shows that the age of a gene determines how fast they adapt. These findings demonstrate how gene evolution occurs as an “adaptive walk” through time.

    New species arise and evolve because individuals accumulate mutations in their genome, some of which have no effect. Others lead to changes that give their carriers distinct competitive advantages. As early as 1932, Sewall Wright introduced a metaphor that inspired decades of theoretical and experimental research in evolutionary biology to describe the process of adaptation. Wright described the model of the "fitness landscape". Here he described an evolving population as "hikers" moving towards a fitness peak. Much like a mountaineer slowly climbing to the top of a mountain. In 1998, Orr demonstrated that this "adaptive walk" follows a simple rule of diminishing returns: The further a population is from its fitness peak, the greater the steps it takes. One prediction of this theory is that recently evolved, i.e. "young" genes tend to accumulate more adaptive mutations with greater effects than older genes because they are further away from their fitness peak. This is precisely the hypothesis that Ana Filipa Moutinho and Julien Dutheil from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, together with Adam Eyre-Walker from the University of Sussex, wanted to test.

    However, testing this hypothesis proved to be quite difficult. The historical record of mutations accumulated in a gene is usually not available, and their effects on fitness are largely unknown. Moreover, other properties of genes, such as their length, can distort the effect of gene age. Therefore, the authors proposed a new approach to test the adaptive walk model of gene evolution.

    First, they used population genetic models that can assess variation in the fitness effect of mutations. To do this, they compared the genomes of several individuals in a population and measured the rate of adaptive evolution in different gene categories. Likewise, they took advantage of the fact that not all genes in a genome are the same age. Some genes are young and shared by only a few closely related species, while others are older and shared by species that separated millions of years ago. Finally, they used the distribution of mutations among genes of different ages to understand how adaptive mutations spread over time.

    Using two distinct species, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster and the small flowering plant Arabidopsis thaliana, this study showed that a gene's age significantly impacts the rate of molecular adaptation and that mutations in young genes tend to have larger effects. These results provide the first strong empirical evidence that molecular evolution follows an adaptive walk model over a deep evolutionary timescale and adds a new layer of evidence to the fitness landscape theory proposed almost 100 years ago.


    Originalpublikation:

    https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3001775


    Weitere Informationen:

    https://www.evolbio.mpg.de/3609323/news_publication_19215608_transferred?c=15503


    Bilder

    Auf dem Weg zum Fitness-Gipfel.
    Auf dem Weg zum Fitness-Gipfel.

    Max-Planck-Institut für Evolutionsbiologie


    Merkmale dieser Pressemitteilung:
    Journalisten
    Biologie
    überregional
    Forschungsergebnisse, Wissenschaftliche Publikationen
    Englisch


     

    Auf dem Weg zum Fitness-Gipfel.


    Zum Download

    x

    Hilfe

    Die Suche / Erweiterte Suche im idw-Archiv
    Verknüpfungen

    Sie können Suchbegriffe mit und, oder und / oder nicht verknüpfen, z. B. Philo nicht logie.

    Klammern

    Verknüpfungen können Sie mit Klammern voneinander trennen, z. B. (Philo nicht logie) oder (Psycho und logie).

    Wortgruppen

    Zusammenhängende Worte werden als Wortgruppe gesucht, wenn Sie sie in Anführungsstriche setzen, z. B. „Bundesrepublik Deutschland“.

    Auswahlkriterien

    Die Erweiterte Suche können Sie auch nutzen, ohne Suchbegriffe einzugeben. Sie orientiert sich dann an den Kriterien, die Sie ausgewählt haben (z. B. nach dem Land oder dem Sachgebiet).

    Haben Sie in einer Kategorie kein Kriterium ausgewählt, wird die gesamte Kategorie durchsucht (z.B. alle Sachgebiete oder alle Länder).